100 books like Stammered Songbook

By Erwin Mortier, Paul Vincent (translator),

Here are 100 books that Stammered Songbook fans have personally recommended if you like Stammered Songbook. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Out of Mind

Nicci Gerrard Author Of The Last Ocean: What Dementia Teaches Us about Love

From my list on explore dementia and the mystery of the human mind.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a novelist, a journalist, a humanist celebrant, and coauthor with my husband of the best-selling Nicci French thrillers. Witnessing my father’s dementia and his slow-motion dying radically transformed the way I think about what it is to be human. In 2014, I founded John’s Campaign which seeks to make the care of those who are vulnerable and powerless more compassionate, and which is now a national movement in the UK. In 2016, I won the Orwell Prize for Journalism for ‘exposing Britain’s social evils' in the pieces I wrote exploring the nature of dementia.

Nicci's book list on explore dementia and the mystery of the human mind

Nicci Gerrard Why did Nicci love this book?

There cannot be a more brilliant or more shattering evocation of what it feels like to gradually realise you are forgetting yourself and vanishing from your own life: the mind observes the mind’s deterioration. Bernleff’s pioneering novel, published in 1984, follows the journey of its narrator Maarten from the first days of confusion into a darkness of self-loss. A beautiful, poignant masterpiece about memory and forgetting. 

By J. Bernlef, Adrienne Dixon (translator),

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Out of Mind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Everyday Maarten notices his increasing forgetfulness, but his attempts to conceal it are fruitless. This novel shows the strength of the bond keeping him and his wife together, the result of a lifetime of loving, so that they manage to find a way to carry on in the face of deterioration.


Book cover of The Nostalgia Factory: Memory, Time and Ageing

Nicci Gerrard Author Of The Last Ocean: What Dementia Teaches Us about Love

From my list on explore dementia and the mystery of the human mind.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a novelist, a journalist, a humanist celebrant, and coauthor with my husband of the best-selling Nicci French thrillers. Witnessing my father’s dementia and his slow-motion dying radically transformed the way I think about what it is to be human. In 2014, I founded John’s Campaign which seeks to make the care of those who are vulnerable and powerless more compassionate, and which is now a national movement in the UK. In 2016, I won the Orwell Prize for Journalism for ‘exposing Britain’s social evils' in the pieces I wrote exploring the nature of dementia.

Nicci's book list on explore dementia and the mystery of the human mind

Nicci Gerrard Why did Nicci love this book?

Drowse Draaisma is a memory specialist, and this lucid, eloquent and humorous book celebrates the rich and fruitful pleasures of memory in later life (and takes the sting out of the natural forgetfulness that comes as we grow older). It combines science, psychology, anecdotes, advice, and it is above all a work of spirit and optimism.  

By Douwe Draaisma,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Nostalgia Factory as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

With a storyteller's gift and a scientist's insights, Draaisma celebrates the unique pleasures of the aging memory

You cannot call to mind the name of a man you have known for 30 years. You walk into a room and forget what you came for. What is the name of that famous film you've watched so many times? These are common experiences, and as we grow older we tend to worry about these lapses. Is our memory failing? Is it dementia? Douwe Draaisma, a renowned memory specialist, here focuses on memory in later life. Writing with eloquence and humor, he explains…


Book cover of The Iceberg: A Memoir

Nicci Gerrard Author Of The Last Ocean: What Dementia Teaches Us about Love

From my list on explore dementia and the mystery of the human mind.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a novelist, a journalist, a humanist celebrant, and coauthor with my husband of the best-selling Nicci French thrillers. Witnessing my father’s dementia and his slow-motion dying radically transformed the way I think about what it is to be human. In 2014, I founded John’s Campaign which seeks to make the care of those who are vulnerable and powerless more compassionate, and which is now a national movement in the UK. In 2016, I won the Orwell Prize for Journalism for ‘exposing Britain’s social evils' in the pieces I wrote exploring the nature of dementia.

Nicci's book list on explore dementia and the mystery of the human mind

Nicci Gerrard Why did Nicci love this book?

This stunning memoir is the author’s recollection of the time between her husband’s diagnosis of a brain tumour that robbed him of language, and his death aged fifty-three. Time runs out for them very quickly. Sometimes the experience of tending to him is stupendously painful and hard (she is a mother of a small child as well as a wife to a dying man). Sometimes it is oddly peaceful. Every so often there are moments of euphoria. Always there is thought, imagination, empathy, care, and love. Above all, love.

By Marion Coutts,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Iceberg as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 2008 the art critic Tom Lubbock was diagnosed with a brain tumour. The tumour was located in the area controlling speech and language, and would eventually rob him of the ability to speak. He died early in 2011. Marion Coutts was his wife.

In short bursts of beautiful, textured prose, Coutts describes the eighteen months leading up to her partner's death. This book is an account of a family unit, man, woman, young child, under assault, and how the three of them fought to keep it intact.

Written with extraordinary narrative force and power, The Iceberg is almost shocking…


Book cover of Somebody I Used to Know: A Memoir

Vered Neta Author Of Things We Do For Love

From my list on the light side of Alzheimer’s.

Why am I passionate about this?

Like the Bach sisters in my novel Things We Do For Love, my sisters and I have cared for our mother, who battles Alzheimer's. Witnessing her transformation from a vibrant powerhouse to someone resembling the Walking Dead has been heart-wrenching. Despite the emotional rollercoaster, this journey has deeply connected us with our mother. Delving into the depths of her being has been a privilege, offering profound insights into her true essence. This challenging experience has unfolded as a disguised blessing. In this journey, we've discovered the beauty of unconditional love that binds our family together. It reflects the central question of my novel: What truly makes a happy family?

Vered's book list on the light side of Alzheimer’s

Vered Neta Why did Vered love this book?

Receiving a dementia diagnosis at just 58 years old can be paralysing, but Wendy Mitchell chose a different path. Instead of preparing for the end, she embraced life with newfound determination.

Wendy became a passionate advocate and speaker for dementia awareness. Her remarkable journey includes earning two honorary doctorates and achieving many of her life's dreams, including becoming a published author to share her deeply personal story.

With engaging wit and unwavering courage, Wendy candidly narrates her daily battle with the illness. Her story is both heartwarming and inspirational, as she shows us that despite the challenges, dementia can also bring unexpected gifts alongside sorrow.

Wendy's character is endearing, and her resilience shines through, leaving readers with a profound sense of hope and a deeper understanding of the human spirit in the face of adversity.

By Wendy Mitchell,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Somebody I Used to Know as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE RICHARD AND JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK CHOSEN AS A 2018 SUMMER READ BY THE SUNDAY TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, THE TIMES AND THE MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Revelatory' Guardian 'A miracle' Telegraph 'A landmark book' Financial Times Brave, illuminating and inspiring, Somebody I Used to Know gets to the very heart of what it means to be human. What do you lose when you lose your memories? What do you value when this loss reframes how you've lived, and how you will live in the future? How…


Book cover of In Pursuit of Memory: The Fight Against Alzheimer's

Sandeep Jauhar Author Of My Father's Brain: Life in the Shadow of Alzheimer's

From my list on the complexities of Alzheimer's and dementia.

Why am I passionate about this?

For nearly 7 years I watched my father decline from Alzheimer’s. It was perhaps the most difficult journey I’ve ever taken. My book, My Father’s Brain, is a memoir of my relationship with my father as he succumbed to his disease, but it is also a scientific and historical inquiry into the fragility of the brain. In the book, I set my father’s descent into dementia alongside my own journey, as a doctor, writer, and son, toward understanding this mysterious and devastating disease.

Sandeep's book list on the complexities of Alzheimer's and dementia

Sandeep Jauhar Why did Sandeep love this book?

A British neuroscientist, Jebelli travels around the world to discover the latest in dementia research.

He goes to Papua New Guinea, Japan, India, and China to learn about experimental (but mostly futile) treatments, including stem cells, blood transfusions and repurposed cancer drugs.

In the end, he acknowledges how little medicine currently has to offer patients living with dementia, even as he holds out hope (far-fetched, in my view) for a cure in 10 years.

By Joseph Jebelli,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked In Pursuit of Memory as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

For readers of Atul Gawande, Siddhartha Mukherjee, and Henry Marsh, a riveting, gorgeously written biography of one of history's most fascinating and confounding diseases -- Alzheimer's -- from its discovery more than 100 years ago to today's race towards a cure.

Alzheimer's is the great global epidemic of our time, affecting millions worldwide -- there are more than 5 million people diagnosed in the US alone. And as our population ages, scientists are working against the clock to find a cure.

Neuroscientist Joseph Jebelli is among them. His beloved grandfather had Alzheimer's and now he's written the book he needed…


Book cover of Green Vanilla Tea: One Family's Extraordinary Journey of Love, Hope, and Remembering

Ann Campanella Author Of Motherhood: Lost and Found: A memoir

From my list on inspiring memoirs about Alzheimer’s and Dementia.

Why am I passionate about this?

An author of a caregiving memoir myself, I’m also a former magazine and newspaper editor who has had the opportunity to read and write about many topics. For the past five years, I have been a manager and director of AlzAuthors, an online global organization that offers the world’s most comprehensive collection of books and blogs on Alzheimer’s and dementia. To say I have done a lot of reading on this subject is an understatement. I’ve been honored to work with so many talented and big-hearted authors who share their Alzheimer’s and dementia experiences. Being immersed in the Alzheimer’s world through AlzAuthors has given me insight into many of the best memoirs on this subject.   

Ann's book list on inspiring memoirs about Alzheimer’s and Dementia

Ann Campanella Why did Ann love this book?

As a writer and lover of memoir myself, the fact that I still remember how I felt after reading Green Vanilla Tea the first time, says a lot. The tremendous sadness of the book is woven so tightly with the love and appreciation of family in this book, I felt transported. Marie Williams shares the tragic story of her husband’s frontal temporal dementia as they are raising two teenage boys. Her beautiful prose describes a journey that is messy, tender, and sacred. This book changed my concept of love – stretching and renewing me!

By Marie Williams,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Green Vanilla Tea as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Green Vanilla Tea is a true story of love and courage in the face of a deadly and little understood illness. With literary finesse, compassion, and a powerful gift of storytelling, Marie Williams writes poignantly of her husband Dominic’s struggles with early onset dementia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at the age of 40, and how their family found hope amidst the wreckage of a mysterious neurological condition.
 
As the condition develops and progresses, the normally devoted family man and loving partner seems to disappear beneath an expressionless facade, erratic behavior, and a relentless desire to wander that often leaves…


Book cover of Leaving Tinkertown

Ann Campanella Author Of Motherhood: Lost and Found: A memoir

From my list on inspiring memoirs about Alzheimer’s and Dementia.

Why am I passionate about this?

An author of a caregiving memoir myself, I’m also a former magazine and newspaper editor who has had the opportunity to read and write about many topics. For the past five years, I have been a manager and director of AlzAuthors, an online global organization that offers the world’s most comprehensive collection of books and blogs on Alzheimer’s and dementia. To say I have done a lot of reading on this subject is an understatement. I’ve been honored to work with so many talented and big-hearted authors who share their Alzheimer’s and dementia experiences. Being immersed in the Alzheimer’s world through AlzAuthors has given me insight into many of the best memoirs on this subject.   

Ann's book list on inspiring memoirs about Alzheimer’s and Dementia

Ann Campanella Why did Ann love this book?

Leaving Tinkertown is a romp of a memoir that takes the reader behind the scenes of Tinkertown, her father’s colorful roadside attraction in New Mexico. As Ross Ward descends into Alzheimer's, we learn what it was like growing up with this man and how Tanya’s complicated but tender history with him both repels and pulls her back home. Tanya’s writing is gorgeous, and this memoir is both vivid and heartbreaking! It’s a story you won’t soon forget.

By Tanya Ward Goodman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Leaving Tinkertown as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When Tanya Ward Goodman came home to New Mexico to visit her dad at the end of 1996, he was fifty-five years old and just beginning to show symptoms of the Alzheimer's disease that would kill him six years later. Early onset dementia is a shock and a challenge to every family, but the Wards were not an ordinary family. Ross Ward was an eccentric artist and collector whose unique museum, Tinkertown, brought visitors from all over the world to the Sandia Mountains outside Albuquerque. In this book Tanya tells Ross's story and her own, sharing the tragedy and the…


Book cover of Finding the Right Words: A Story of Literature, Grief, and the Brain

Jason Karlawish Author Of The Problem of Alzheimer's: How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease Into a Crisis and What We Can Do about It

From my list on making sense of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a physician and a writer. Together, they create a matrix of practice, research, and writing. I care for patients at the Penn Memory Center and am a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where I teach and study topics at the intersections of bioethics, aging, and the neurosciences. I wrote The Problem of Alzheimer’s: How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease into a Crisis and What We Can Do About It and the novel Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont and essays for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Hill, STAT, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. I raise whippets, and I’m a passionate reader of the physician and poet John Keats. 

Jason's book list on making sense of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia

Jason Karlawish Why did Jason love this book?

This book is a kind of detective story. It returns to the scene of a long-ago committed crime, namely the incomplete diagnosis and substandard care Jerry Weinstein received in an indifferent health care system and a culture haunted by stigmas. The authors are a masterful team. Bruce Miller is a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco’s Memory and Aging Center. He’s a widely-recognized expert in the diagnosis and classification of neurodegenerative diseases. Cindy Weinstein is a professor of English literature who focuses on the 19th century American novel. Weinstein’s expertise is Herman Melville, the master of narratives of dissection.

Jerry, Cindy’s father, died in 1997 after a years-long struggle with an inadequately diagnosed and neglected dementia. Together, physicians and literary scholars reconstruct what happened. By putting words to the problem, they make sense of what was painful nonsense. This is the book to understand the value of…

By Cindy Weinstein, Bruce L. Miller,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Finding the Right Words as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The moving story of an English professor studying neurology in order to understand and come to terms with her father's death from Alzheimer's.

In 1985, when Cindy Weinstein was a graduate student at UC Berkeley, her beloved father, Jerry, was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. He was fifty-eight years old. Twelve years later, at age seventy, he died having lost all of his memories-along with his ability to read, write, and speak.

Finding the Right Words follows Weinstein's decades-long journey to come to terms with her father's dementia as both a daughter and an English professor. Although her lifelong love…


Book cover of Tangles: A Story about Alzheimer's, My Mother, and Me

Jo Owens Author Of A Funny Kind of Paradise

From my list on for commiserating over the "aging parents" challenge.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a care aide (aka personal support worker) who has happily worked at an extended care facility for more than twenty years, and as such, I have been a compassionate listener to many a family member suffering from the tsunami of feelings involved when coping with aging parents or spouses, so I thought I would be well-positioned and emotionally prepared to cope when it was my turn to face my own mother's deterioration. How wrong I was! Thank goodness for the generous souls who write memoirs. Each of the books that I have chosen was an education and an affirmation to me as I tried to maintain my equilibrium while supporting my mother and my mother-in-law through their final years.

Jo's book list on for commiserating over the "aging parents" challenge

Jo Owens Why did Jo love 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…

By Sarah Leavitt,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Tangles as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this powerful memoir the the LA Times calls “moving, rigorous, and heartbreaking," Sarah Leavitt reveals how Alzheimer’s disease transformed her mother, Midge, and her family forever. In spare blackand- white drawings and clear, candid prose, Sarah shares her family’s journey through a harrowing range of emotions—shock, denial, hope, anger, frustration—all the while learning to cope, and managing to find moments of happiness. Midge, a Harvard educated intellectual, struggles to comprehend the simplest words; Sarah’s father, Rob, slowly adapts to his new role as full-time caretaker, but still finds time for wordplay and poetry with his wife; Sarah and her…


Book cover of The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People Who Have Alzheimer Disease and Other Dementias

Andrew E. Budson and Maureen K. O'Connor Author Of Six Steps to Managing Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia: A Guide for Families

From my list on to understand dementia.

Why are we passionate about this?

As a neurologist and neuropsychologist team who have spent their entire clinical, teaching, and research careers focused on individuals and their families experiencing memory loss, Alzheimer’s disease, and dementia, our goal is simple. We want to empower individuals and their families with the tools they need to manage memory loss, Alzheimer’s disease, and dementia. We work to balance pharmacological and nonpharmacological management, as well as the needs of the individual with those of their family. Reading books like the ones in our list plus articles in medical journals keeps us current with the progress in the science of dementia and the humanity of individuals and families living with the disease. 

Andrew's book list on to understand dementia

Andrew E. Budson and Maureen K. O'Connor Why did Andrew love this book?

Now in its 7th edition, this book is the classic guide to caregiving for individuals with dementia. Comprehensive, and filled with stories and anecdotes, it is packed with valuable information on dementia and the behaviors that dementia engenders. We have read it several times and have recommended it to hundreds if not thousands of families. 

By Nancy L. Mace, Peter V. Rabins,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The 36-Hour Day as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

With over 3.5 million copies sold, the bestselling guide to understanding and caring for people with dementia is now completely revised and updated!

For 40 years, The 36-Hour Day has been the leading work in the field for caregivers of those with dementia. Written by experts with decades of experience caring for individuals with memory loss, Alzheimer's, and other dementias, the book is widely known for its authoritativeness and compassionate approach to care. Featuring everything from the causes of dementia to managing its early stages to advice on caring for those in the later stages of the disease, it is…


Book cover of Out of Mind
Book cover of The Nostalgia Factory: Memory, Time and Ageing
Book cover of The Iceberg: A Memoir

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