Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

This book was really different than I thought it was going to be. For some reason I'd mixed this one and When Breath Becomes Air together and thought they were going to be really similar (probably because the covers are similar). But this was very different--it wasn't a memoir as much as the other one, but it was about how we take care of the elderly and terminally ill in our culture and what we can do better. Basically, he says that doctors and people in our culture don't know how to have hard conversations with their loved ones or patients who are dying to ask them what they really want, and they prioritize safety and living longer more than allowing people to live the way they actually want to and allowing them to take risks to be happy. I loved, loved this perspective and it gave me hope that being old won't be as hard as it looks from the outside. This is one of those books that I think I should buy and save to have as a resource for later, because it was chock full of such good information. I hope I don't forget about it and can read it later when I want it.