100 Books Like Eudora Honeysett is Quite Well, Thank You

Mannix is a retired Palliative Care Consultant, and this wonderful book takes case studies from her long career and presents them as vignettes designed to reassure a readership who may be anxious about the process of dying. She relates each story with candour and humility, acknowledging how much she has learnt from her patients and their families whilst glossing over the enormous impact that she has evidently had on their care.

This is an incredibly useful book for those working with people at the end of life, but it is also a really lovely read for anyone fearful of death, anyone who has felt the impact of a family bereavement, and anyone who will one day face death themselves, i.e., every single one of us. 

Ah, the first sentences, “Ove is fifty-nine. He drives a Saab.”

Ove’s story is written without excessive embellishment (and I’ll admit that I often enjoy books with rich and poetic language), but it is so impactful. Backman’s economy of language supports the adage of ‘actions speak louder than words.’

Ove is on a path of self-discovery. He begrudgingly becomes immersed in his community; the grumpy old man becomes an unlikely hero. I saw my grandfather in this stoic character, both stern and unwittingly funny. Supporting characters are so well developed, that I saw in them, too, people I know—my immigrant neighbor, my mother suffering from Alzheimer’s... 

A Man Called Ove, feels real. It is a believable portrayal of kindness in this world, when we need it the most. 

I loved this memoir because it was humorous and it transported me back to my own days as a junior doctor in a District General hospital, in the mid-1980s.

The black humour of a medic combined with the real human stories made it very relatable. This, merged with an easy-to-read diary style, captured the true life experiences and dilemmas of a junior doctor working in the NHS perfectly.

It was a walk down memory lane for me and it would provide an amusing insight for non-medics.

This book has one of the most unique premises I’ve ever come across in any book, much less a romance—Tiffy is just out of a toxic relationship and needs a cheap apartment fast. Leon is a palliative care nurse who is working graveyard shifts and needs extra money to help his brother. They come to an agreement—without ever actually meeting each other—to split the flat: Tiffy is there while Leon works and vice versa. 

They begin to communicate through Post-it notes, and it’s honestly the most beautiful development of a relationship I’ve ever read. I was tearing through the pages to eagerly find the moment when they finally—finally!—meet in real life. An exceptional book from start to finish! 

The humanity! I could not imagine being trapped in a body that I no longer had control over. To make a decision about purposely ending your life and then finding the love of your life is awful.

From the care takers point of view, I felt every feeling of letting myself go just to have to remind myself of the reality of the situation. There was no arguing with a brick wall. Only acceptance. The grief was real.

This book attracted me because, as a gerontologist/social worker, I’m interested in the subject of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and dementia. This book, rather than describing the long, sad decline of a loved one, tells Bloom’s story of trying to help her spouse with AD to end his life.

Bloom is a clinical social worker who writes with a deep understanding of human behavior and motivation, most notably her own, which makes her a fine memoirist. She writes candidly about her emotions, unafraid to reveal less flattering details.

Her story is a sad one, with many ups and downs, but the overwhelming sense I got was of her powerful love for her husband and desire to give him what he needed in the face of his dementia diagnosis.

Betty Rollin is best known as the award-winning national correspondent for NBC. Writing about her personal life, she sure knows how to tell a story. Long before any state recognized a legal option for assisted dying, a few brave people navigated the risks of helping a loved one exit life on their own terms. Betty and her husband, Ed, were two such people, and they were especially courageous in publicizing what they did. Last Wish was a bestseller when it came out in 1985 and again in 1999. It became an ABC TV movie in 1992 starring Patty Duke and Maureen Stapleton. Both the story and the storytelling, are captivating. Betty’s mom got the peaceful death she desired, and we got a wonderful, even humorous story of love, loyalty, and international daring. 

Humor has always pulled me through the hard parts of life, and laughter is the test that tells me if I’ll be compatible with someone when we first meet. So to read a ridiculous character who’s coming in hot right on page one, charging through the story with absolutely no filter, epic foibles fully (and uncomfortably) detailed, and unable to stop making terrible decisions had me cackling out loud.

I was initially drawn to this book for the perfect cover, but I quickly fell in love with the writing and a story that captures that frustrating push and pull of wanting what we can’t have. It’s a delightful mess of bees, goats, awkward sex, strange conversations, and women doing whatever they want. 

I love Carl Jung’s ability to see into the nature of consciousness and make the connection between the experience of being a being on Earth and the true nature of our being. He is one of the first scientists to describe the near-death experience and to see it as another trick of the dualistic world.

Jung explains how, during his heart attack, he died and was transported above the earth to a doorway guarded by a cosmically dangerous spike. Jung’s observations as a scientist and doctor about what makes us tick are a foundation for people realizing their true nature through people like David Bingham today.

Yes, another novel set largely in a hotel. This time it’s in Switzerland and overlooks Lake Geneva, spreading, in the wonderful words of Anita Brookner, "like an anaesthetic towards the invisible further shore." Edith Hope is a writer of romantic fiction. She arrives at the "stolid and dignified" Hotel du Lac in late autumn. This is not a holiday for Edith. Her friends and family have insisted she go away for a few weeks to ponder a ‘social indiscretion’. She was due to marry Geoffrey, a boring man she didn’t love, and deserted him on the day of the wedding. Her heart had gone out to David, a married man.

Brookner had an enviable gift for describing people and their peculiarities. Those whom Edith Hope meets at the hotel are largely from the aristocracy, and each and every one is eccentric in the extreme. Edith describes her fellow guests to… show more.