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. 

It is rare for a story to stay with me as long as this one has. The weaving together of grief and hope was both heartwrenching and heartwarming. We are created and called to love God and love others. That isn’t always easy or convenient. This story showed what loving your neighbor can look like and how it can change a life. 

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! 

Louisa Clark is a lively heroine in the most somber, complicated circumstances, which elevates this book from a normal rom-com to something tender and profound. JoJo Moyes has done a fantastic job combining humor and sadness in this tale of love and hope.

The book deals with the perplexing debate around assisted suicide through the characters, and as a reader accustomed to upbeat endings, I couldn’t see how this would end well. And I’m glad it didn’t. Sometimes, we need a bittersweet blow to the stomach and a good old cry.

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. 

I love reading a book and knowing the other shoe is about to drop, and this book does it in a satisfying way. Greta lives in a house that is literally falling apart around her and transcribes sessions for a local sex therapist. There, she discovers the subject of her fascination: the cold, distant, and traumatized Big Swiss.

Despite the sometimes-heavy subject matter, the interplay between Greta and Big Swiss as they embark upon their affair is so much fun. This is the perfect train wreck in that it’s not a matter of IF, but WHEN Big Swiss discovers Greta’s duplicity, the fun is all in the journey.

Not only are Greta and Big Swiss nuanced, engaging characters, but their small town is populated with colorful side characters who make Big Swiss a book world you want to spend time in, even when you know things will go so spectacularly… show more.

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.