Books like Feeding My Mother — picked by fans

Most of us have complicated feelings about our parents, and Elizabeth Hay is no exception. The time Hay spends filling in the family back story pays off by making the elder-care journey more poignant and nuanced than a sparser portrait would have produced. I read this memoir at the height of my own care-taking marathon, and while I appreciated every gorgeous word, the whole book would have been worth it for this sentence alone: "Yes, I volunteered to take [the care of my aging parents] on, but there was never a moment when I didn't wish to be let off the hook." I breathed a huge sigh of relief: I am not a monster, and I am not the only one to feel that way. I still feel grateful for that sentence.

When I read memoirs about aging parents, loss is usually an important theme; Ilsley's memoir stands out because his regret is for a closeness that never was. "Only now, as my father enters his nineties . . . and my aspirations of eldercare become more interventionist, has our relationship had a chance to deepen.

"And by deepen, I mean really begin to annoy each other."

Ilsley's relationship with his father is challenging. There are good reasons why Ilsley chooses to live in Vancouver rather than "home" in Nova Scotia. But his father is still is his father, and Ilsley commits. His writing is clear, candid, thoughtful, and so warm and funny. I loved this book.

When I read this graphic novel for the first time in 2010, it had just been published, and my mom was still my mom. I had been a care aide for ten years and I was thinking a lot about what families had already been through by the time their beloved came to me in Extended Care. Tangles tells the story of Sarah Leavitt's family from the beginning, when the family starts to notice something is wrong with Mom, to the diagnosis of Early Onset Alzheimer's disease, through the long journey until death. The pictures and text were a perfect combination that cracked open my heart and made me a better care aide.

Years later, I had a more personal use for Tangles. My mom didn't have Alzheimer's disease, but Leavitt's book resonated like a tuning fork in St. Paul's cathedral. "I decided to pretend she wasn't my mother… show more.

This graphic memoir by Roz Chast is one of my favorite books of all time. I completely relate to the story, which focuses on Chast’s relationship with her parents as they age and become less capable of managing independently.

The book depicts her repeated efforts to coax her parents to face the reality of their aging and failing health as she gradually does more and more to help them, a situation I’m very familiar with and wrote about in my recent memoir. As an only child (like me), she must deal with every crisis and decision.

Her drawings add humor and emphasis to the story, but the prose alone vividly portrays her frustrations and heartbreak as Chast faces complication after complication and loss after loss in her parents’ final few years. 

I read this book last year and adored it from the moment it began.

I knew straight away it was going to be something special when I realised there was something unusual about Nick and Bee’s relationship – and oh my!

Without giving too much away (trust me, it will spoil it!), it allows you to instantly suspend your disbelief and be swept up into the love story that you know, in your brain, can’t possibly exist, but which your heart desperately wants you to believe. 

I read it in a day because I simply couldn’t put it down, and recommend it to everyone I see – and no book can come more recommended than that!

This book focuses on cybersecurity for parents and teenagers, specifically focusing on social media. As a parent of a teenager myself, I know how critical this area really is. Teens are often using social networks and communication channels that their parents are mostly or completely unfamiliar with. Due to that lack of familiarity, parents have a hard time monitoring or setting appropriate limits on the ways their children use social media. Author Effie Manolas wrote this book for both parents and teens, enabling an open conversation on both the benefits and the risks of social media.

When I started working in Indian politics, I believed fixing issues that people faced was the prime driver of votes. It soon became obvious that it wasn’t facts and issues that determined election results, it was emotions. It was also clear that emotions could be manipulated, and the information people chose to believe in wasn't necessarily based in reality. This book details how troll farms built by political parties can be used to shape the conversation on social media, generate fake outrage, and derail rational thought, and how this influences election results. 

I’m drawn to books that buck expectations, whether that’s through the format, content, or approach. So I adore how this book absolutely tears them all down and creates something more original instead. Chunks of this book are written like social media posts, which create quick, digestible sections that let the absurdity, humor, and social musings really hit.

I also admire how Lockwood is able to switch so smoothly between hilarity, heartbreak, anxiety, and sadness; I was cackling one minute and then ugly crying just a few pages later. I’ve never read a book quite like this before. Lockwood’s writing style inspires me to take more risks in my own stories.

I found incredibly compelling the argument of how important humility and the willingness to admit what we don’t know are to democratic, liberal thought.

That we have become a society that rarely listens to ideas that challenge our own or that disrupt what we think we know to be true–is hugely dangerous. 

As Lynch explores, more information has not led to greater certainty or confidence in the answers we find. What we are experiencing is not only a crisis of truth, but one of trust.

We all know how important it is to reach the target audience for your product or service, whatever business sector you operate in, so as an author, this is particularly relevant for me.

The good thing about the book is that it does not just focus on having an online presence but confirms the need to ensure you have offline presence too. 

It is a practical approach based around four steps to creating your brand and the strategy to reach the audience, with examples of how the suggested strategies work. It is a realistic discussion about techniques we need to use today in order to reach the widest possible audience. I shall be trying the four steps out for myself!