THE END OF YOUR LIFE BOOK CLUB
The Gulf Harbour Book Club met on May 5 to discuss The End of Your Life Book Club. Including Zoom, there were 31 attendees.
Joan Kaplan did the author review of Willam Schwalbe. Will was a guest last year for his book We Should Not Be Friends. We thought he was so delightful that we invited him back for his bestselling book The End of Your Life Book Club. What a great decision.
Born in New York in 1962; he grew up in Cambridge, Mass.; went to boarding school in New Hampshire; and to Yale in New Haven, Conn.
He worked most of his life in publishing: at William Morrow, and then at Hyperion, where I was Editor in Chief. In January 2008, he left Hyperion to found a startup called Cookstr.com and ran that for six years. It’s now part of Macmillan Publishers, where he has worked since 2014.
“Books have been the constant in my life. From those my mother read me when I was too young to read, to those fathers read us when we could read but still liked to be read to. From books I read under the covers, long after I was supposed to be asleep—including every single thriller by the magnificent Alistair Maclean—to books that I found in my teens that helped me imagine all different kinds of lives and see the world through others’ eyes.
I’ve written four books. The first—Send: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do it Better—was written with my friend David Shipley. The second, The End of Your Life Book Club, is about the books I read with my mother when she was dying. The third is Books For Living, about the role books can play in our lives and how they can show us how to live each day more fully and with more meaning. And the fourth is We Should Not Be Friends, which is about the power of friendships, especially unlikely ones, to change our lives.”
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers’ Favorite Memoir & Autobiography (2012)
An Entertainment Weekly and BookPage Best Book of the Year
During her treatment for cancer, Mary Anne Schwalbe and her son Will spent many hours sitting in waiting rooms together. To pass the time, they would talk about the books they were reading. Once, by chance, they read the same book at the same time—and an informal book club of two was born. Through their wide-ranging reading, Will and Mary Anne—and we, their fellow readers—are reminded how books can be comforting, astonishing, and illuminating, changing the way that we feel about and interact with the world around us. A profoundly moving memoir of caregiving, mourning, and love—The End of Your Life Book Club is also about the joy of reading, and the ways that joy is multiplied when we share it with others.
One of Schwalbe’s favorite outcomes of writing this book so far is that early copies have inspired people to start reading with their family. He got an email recently from a woman who has started a book club with her grandson, a teen who is reading The Hunger Games to her.
“That made me so happy,” he says. It’s a fitting tribute to a woman who died at 75 but left an enduring legacy.
“There are a lot of extraordinary people in this country and most don’t get an obituary in The New York Times,” Schwalbe says. “Mom was not somebody who was in The New York Times. She was one of those extraordinary, ordinary people.”
Will spoke with the same compassion he demonstrated with his mother. His kindness and patience were available for all of us to share and hopefully to share with our loved ones. I know I took his advice with my great nieces and nephews as well as my sisters-in-law. Somehow talking about books relieves any tension you may feel in a familiar relationship. We hope you can persuade your friends and relatives to communicate through books. It’s a heartwarming experience.
The Gulf Harbour Book Club meets on the first Monday of each month in the Fitness Center. If you want to join the book club email [email protected]. Zoom is available for members if the author allows it. Zoom is available for members during the off season. We had nine authors lined up for the 2025/26 season. The August book is The Queens of Crime by Marie Benedict. She will not be on Zoom. We have the following authors on Zoom. September is Kristin Harmel for The Stolen Life of Collette Marceau, The Lotus Shoes with Jane Lang, Abi Dare with The Girl with the Louding Voice and its sequel And So I Roar, Not Yours to Keep by Zelly Ruskin, Bernhardt Schline for The Granddaughter, March is Sandi Altner for Rupert’s Landing, April is Chris Torockio for The Soul Hunters and May is Stephanie Dray for A Founding Mother.
