Here are 100 books that The Successful Caregiver’s Guide fans have personally recommended if you like
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I was first a clinical social worker and then a social work professor with research focus on older adults. Over the past few years, as I have been writing my own memoir about caring for my parents, I’ve been drawn to memoirs and first-person stories of aging, illness, and death. The best memoirs on these topics describe the emotional transformation in the writer as they process their loss of control, loss of their own or a loved one’s health, and their fear, pain, and suffering. In sharing these stories, we help others empathize with what we’ve gone through and help others be better prepared for similar events in their own lives.
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.
#1 New York Times Bestseller 2014 National Book Award Finalist Winner of the inaugural 2014 Kirkus Prize in nonfiction Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award Winner of the 2014 Books for a Better Life Award Winner of the 2015 Reuben Award from National Cartoonists Society
In her first memoir, New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort…
During my decades of working with caregivers as a dementia care expert, I have heard many accounts of what the experience is like—from the sad and hollow to experiences rich in significance. Everyone faces obstacles when caring for a loved one; some of these obstacles come in the form of uncomfortable or painful emotional histories or past unresolved conflicts. After each opportunity to raise awareness and understanding about how dementia impacts individuals, their families, and their communities, I have been gratified to witness enhanced feelings of hope and comfort for all involved. It is my hope that through this book I will enter your home or your professional caregiving setting and work alongside you.
The 36-Hour Day is a comprehensive guide for caregivers that is often recommended by physicians to the families caring for a loved one with any cause of dementia symptoms or cognitive decline. I found the information provided very practical on the medical, legal, financial, and emotional aspects of caring for an individual presenting any level of dementia symptoms.
The clinical insights provided were very helpful, and the information for the caregiver throughout on the value of accessing outside help is such an important reminder for them to not try and navigate this dementia care journey alone!
Combining practical advice with specific examples on how to cope with the challenges associated with caring for a loved one with dementia symptoms make this an excellent guide for the family caregiver.
Through five editions, The 36-Hour Day has been an essential resource for families who love and care for people with Alzheimer disease. Whether a person has Alzheimer disease or another form of dementia, he or she will face a host of problems. The 36-Hour Day will help family members and caregivers address these challenges and simultaneously cope with their own emotions and needs. Featuring useful takeaway messages and informed by recent research into the causes of and the search for therapies to prevent or cure dementia, this edition includes new information on * devices to make life simpler and safer…
I have been a medical social worker for over 40 years working with people who have had a catastrophic illness. I counseled them and their family members. Because of this experience, I have a lot of knowledge, experience, and training regarding the challenges caregivers face. In addition, I was the primary caregiver for my parents and helped take care of 2 friends helping them to die with dignity. Finally, I am the author of an 8-time award-winning book called Role Reversal How to Take Care of Yourself and Your Aging Parents. I have written hundreds of articles on health-related topics including aging and caregiving.
Virginia Morris has been a leading expert in the field of aging and caregiving. I have high respect for her experience and her work. This book is a comprehensive guide that explores emotional, psychological, and physical challenges that arise when the ultimate role reversal happens. It is a difficult transition for all concerned and this resource offers great information, tips, and scenarios that will resonate with all caregivers.
The book that answers all the questions you hoped you’d never have to ask.
Hailed as “an excellent resource” by the Family Caregiver Alliance, How to Care for Aging Parents is an indispensable source of information and support.
Now completely revised and updated, this compassionate, comprehensive caregiver’s bible tackles all the touch subjects, from how to avoid becoming your parent’s “parent,” to understanding what happens to the body in old age, to getting help finding, and paying for, a nursing home.
When love is not enough—and regrettably, it never is—this is the essential guide.
I have been a medical social worker for over 40 years working with people who have had a catastrophic illness. I counseled them and their family members. Because of this experience, I have a lot of knowledge, experience, and training regarding the challenges caregivers face. In addition, I was the primary caregiver for my parents and helped take care of 2 friends helping them to die with dignity. Finally, I am the author of an 8-time award-winning book called Role Reversal How to Take Care of Yourself and Your Aging Parents. I have written hundreds of articles on health-related topics including aging and caregiving.
In my experience working with caregivers burnout is the biggest challenge. This book offers readers real-life case examples and exercises to help caregivers understand themselves better. It helps caregivers closely examine their options as the needs of the person they care for change. It focuses a lot on the psychological issues and challenges the caregiver relationship creates for all who are involved.
Being a caregiver is a difficult role. It requires pateince, tenderness, selflessness, and hard work. Providing care for another human being, whether a parent, loved one, or as a professional requires a level of self love and self care as well that can not be ignored. While it may be a rewarding experience to care for a loved one, it can also be a stressful, both emotionally and mentally. It is easy to get caught up in taking care of someone else that you forget to take care of yourself and your own physical and emotional well being as well.…
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.
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.
From Elizabeth Hay, one of Canada's beloved novelists, comes a startling and beautiful memoir about the drama of her parents' end, and the longer drama of being their daughter. Winner of the 2018 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonficiton.
Jean and Gordon Hay were a colourful, formidable pair. Jean, a late-blooming artist with a marvellous sense of humour, was superlatively frugal; nothing got wasted, not even maggoty soup. Gordon was a proud and ambitious schoolteacher with a terrifying temper, a deep streak of melancholy, and a devotion to flowers, cars, words, and his wife. As old age collides with…
I have worked in senior living for over 25 years. I was the administrative director of both an assisted living facility as well as a memory care facility and then I worked for over 18 years in one of the top national Life Care Communities in the country. During this time, I helped thousands of families navigate the complex and confusing world of senior living. I wrote my book to help families make educated and informed decisions and know what they could do before a crisis! It is not if your parents will need help, it is when! I am passionate about passing on the knowledge of my years in this field.
Dr. Kernisan is a well-known geriatrician who writes an educational newsletter that is as useful as her book!
She has years of expertise on dealing with all kinds of senior health issues and concerns. Excellent book for any caregiver! She covers a wide range of critical things to know if you are caring for an elder loved one that I can’t recommend this book enough!
It’s scary and stressful when it happens…. noticing changes in your parent and becoming increasingly worried about their health and safety. Maybe it’s Mom leaving the stove on, Dad getting lost on his way home, or unpaid bills that trigger this realization. Or perhaps there have been falls or emergency room visits. Whatever it is, you know something’s wrong. You wonder about a diagnosis. And you want your aging parent to accept help, or perhaps move.
Helping an older parent can be gratifying. But it’s especially hard if they’re blowing off your concerns, refusing to make changes, or otherwise resisting…
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.
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.
George K. Ilsley explores his complex relationship with his aging father in this candid memoir full of sharp emotion and disarming humor. George’s father is ninety-one years old, a widower, and fiercely independent; an avid gardener, he’s sweet and more than a little eccentric. But he’s also a hoarder who makes embarrassing comments and invitations to women, and he has made no plans whatsoever for what is inevitably coming over the horizon.
Decades after George has moved four time zones away, he begins to make regular trips home to help care for his cranky and uncooperative father, and to sift…
As far back as I can remember I’ve always loved canines and always wanted to make sure they were
treated kindly. When I
was a kid, I would bring a bag of dog treats with me to visit family and
friends that I knew had dogs; I had to be very convincing too, or else people
would’ve thought they were for me! But they could see it was a delight for me; while everyone would be inside
talking, I would be outside with the pups. Eventually, this enthusiasm
culminated with the creation of Nate Schoemer’s Dog Training Program, with a mission of improving the lives of dogs and their owners through
education.
This
is the best book I’ve read on the science behind canine nutrition and helping
someone's dog live a long and happy life. Rodney Habib and veterinarian Karen
Becker create a prescriptive plan that integrates nutritional health sciences through
the study of the most long-lived canines. They incorporate environmental
principles, stress reduction, and the principles of an overall healthy
lifestyle with preeminent science about what nutrients dogs require. They
emphasize stress, isolation, and psychological factors, how even exposure to
negative energy—insults and mean behavior—can so badly affect dogs and their
owners alike.
The
authors also dig deep into the subject of what pet food manufacturers don’t
want customers to know about. They help the reader get out from the matrix of
how we typically feed our canine companions, with information about how
standard pet foods are made with the lowest quality ingredients, based on how
large corporations do not consider…
In this pathbreaking guide, two of the world's most popular and trusted pet-care advocates reveal new science to teach us how to delay ageing and provide a long, happy, healthy life for our canine companions.
The #1 New York Times Bestseller and Sunday Times Bestseller
'Everyone who lives with dogs needs to read this book' ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ, author of Inside of a Dog and Our Dogs, Ourselves
Over the past few decades, many dogs have been getting sicker and dying prematurely. Why?
Rodney Habib and Dr Karen Shaw Becker have galvanized the best wisdom from top geneticists, microbiologists and longevity…
Karen Thornber is Harry Tuchman Levin Professor in Literature and Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard. Her work brings humanistic insights to global challenges. Thornber is the author of the award-winning scholarly books Empire of Texts in Motion and Ecoambiguity as well as most recently Global Healing: Literature, Advocacy, Care. Current projects include books on gender justice in Asia, mental health, inequality/injustice, sustainability/climate change, and indigeneity.
This expertly translated Chinese novel tells the compelling story of a family in Beijing with an aging patriarch. Narrated largely from the perspective of the rural nurse hired to care for him, Longevity Park reveals the many difficulties facing Chinese individuals as they age as well as the difficulties facing Chinese families with an aging loved one. These challenges resonate with those of individuals and families globally, including pervasive stigmas against the elderly, particularly those who are not as agile mentally or physically as they once were; and the particular hurdles facing family members with their own mental health and other concerns. Zhou’s novel also eloquently describes the many hurdles facing healthcare providers.
China is ageing. Its shrinking households, overworked and overstretched, struggle to carry the burden of care for their elderly. Retired Beijing judge Uncle Xiao is one among millions of old\-timers who face a hopeless choice: accept a lonely decline, or chase dubious miracle cures. Then into his life steps Miss Zhong, a young rural nurse with her own share of problems. The two have little in common, but as time delivers tragedies they learn that family can take many forms. Will this unlikely pair weather lifes storms together, and will Xiao find warmth in his sunset years?
I’ve been writing about birth for decades – how it became a medical process, managed by a surgical specialty in a factory-like setting. I’ve worked with contemporary midwives who are trying to reclaim birth, to move it back home, back to physiological and loving care. And over and over again, I see the similarities to the other gate of life – how death and dying also left home and went into the hospital, where people die, as they birth, pretty much alone – with perhaps a ‘visitor’ allowed. Covid made it worse – but in birth and death, it allowed the hospitals to return to what medicine considered essential: medical procedures, not human connections.
There was a death in my family years back, and somehow after a long and wrenching day at the hospital, we were sitting around my dining room table at a late-night long-delayed dinner – and we were laughing. My brother came into the kitchen, worried about the children present: what were they learning? I answered: They’re learning how to bury us. Death, even death – and I am heavily grieving a loss right now – can be a moment for laughter, the sheer absurdity of life, the grief and sorrow expressed in crying and in laughing. There are other good books that do this, that take a more intellectual approach – but honestly, I admire the chutzpah of Greenberg editing a book of cartoons on death.
The range is from the silly, the grim reaper at the door introducing the fat lady, ‘here to sing for you,' to ones that…
A volume of previously unpublished cartoons by top industry names celebrates the wayward experiences of the baby boomer generation with contributions by such artists as Leo Cullum, Jack Ziegler, and Lee Lorenz. 50,000 first printing.
