Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye. This week, all three came from this reading list about motherhood and parents.
What Dementia Teaches Us About Love by Nicci Gerrard
Summary: After her own father’s death from dementia, author Nicci Gerrard set out to explore the illness that now touches millions of us, yet which we still struggle to speak about. What does dementia mean, for those who live with it, and those who care for them?
I used to say that we are made of our memories, but what happens when memories are lost?
I’m thinking: Yes.
When Death Takes Something From You Give It Back by Naja Marie Aidt
Summary: In 2015, Aidt’s 25-year-old son, Carl, died in a tragic accident. Her memoir is an attempt to formulate a vocabulary to express the deepest kind of pain, and articulates her greatest fear: to forget.
I’m thinking: Yes.
Things Nobody Knows But Me by Amra Pajalić
Summary: When she is four years old Amra Pajalić realises that her mother is different. Fatima is loving but sometimes hears strange voices that tell her to do bizarre things. It is not until she is sixteen that Amra learns the name for the malady that has dogged her mother and affected her own life: bipolar disorder.
I’m thinking: Maybe.
It doesn’t look like you’re going to chip away any of these this time…
You know, one of the things I like about your Sample Saturdays is that it’s a lesson to all of us about impulse buying (which is one of my worst sins). The Kindle makes it so easy: I never use it for Australian books, but sometimes I rush in when an international title takes my fancy. But I usually buy the book instead of just getting a sample. I might make a NY Resolution this year to buy samples only in future!
I was always an impulse buyer on Kindle as well but then thought that if I’m in a book shop, I’d usually open a book I was considering and read the first page or so… and samples are the same (and because they’re free, it satisfies the impulse!).
Yes, I think I should take up this strategy too…
The Aidt is a very striking and beautiful book. I gave up on the Gerrard, perhaps because I’d just read too much about dementia recently.
Have noticed the Aidt popping up on a few ‘best of 2019’ lists…
I’m tracking with you on all these. I suspect my mum has first signs of dementia – very mild as yet but would still be good to read the Gerrard book to help my understanding
Two dementia books I would highly recommend are In Pursuit of Memory by Joseph Jebelli (a clinical view) and Somebody I Used to Know by Wendy Mitchell (an inside view).
Although this might seem like a big undertaking, there is a free online course about understanding dementia run out of the Dementia Studies Centre at University of Tasmania and it’s accessed by people all around the world – I found it to be extremely thorough and informative, and well worth the time. The next course starts in Feb 2020 – https://www.utas.edu.au/wicking/understanding-dementia