Family Book Corner

Our Aging Parents

The Boomer Burden: Dealing with Your Parents' Lifetime Accumulation of Stuff
by Julie Hall
Amazon Price: $10.19
Customer Reviews:
» Dealing with the death of a parent can be very difficult. Emotions run high and feelings are in a state of volatility and turmoil. If this wasn't enough, there is also the problem of dividing up the d...

» I bought this book because the advice given applies to my specific situation, a baby boomer getting close to having to deal with end-of-life issues for my parents. The author bases her suggestions an...

» The author did an excellent job in detailing the process of cleaning up your parents house, dividing the stuff and liquidating the estate. She was in-depth, followed through with details, experiences...

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Some things we just can't put on the back shelf, but before we all die we somehow manage to fill shelves . . . tons of them. Have you noticed, as a Baby Boomer, the sheer amount of clutter a...

» Looks like a good book with lots of helpful information in dealing with the daunting task of cleaning out your parents house. I'm sure we will get some good use out of this book.

My Mother, Your Mother: Embracing "Slow Medicine," the Compassionate Approach...
by Dennis Mccullough
Amazon Price: $5.99
Customer Reviews:
» If you are dealing with an elderly parent with dementia (or other debilitating illness) this is a god-send. Just reading this reduced my stress level greatly and helped me be more patient and toleran...

» This lovely book is a cross between a manual on caring for elderly loved ones and the gripping story of the author's mother as she went from the "Everything's fine" stage to health crises and decline ...

» Highly recommend this book for anyone dealing with an aging parent. It is very comprehensive yet well organized into the different stages of "decline", and user friendly. I have found it to be a gre...

» I found this book helpful and sensitive on a subject near to my heart. I learned some things I'm doing right and things I can do better. Also am better prepared for the future. I wish the author were ...

» I bought this book at the recommendation of someone else and was very disappointed in its superficiality. Anyone with a modicum of common sense could figure out on her own how to handle the problems r...

Coping With Your Difficult Older Parent : A Guide for Stressed-Out Children
by Grace Lebow, Barbara Kane
Amazon Price: $10.76
Customer Reviews:
» ...dry. Lots of useful information, but I prefer Elder Rage by Jacqueline Marcell for an informative book that is very readable. I found myself skipping chapters in Coping that I felt were not releve...

» This book addresses some of the "normal" problems or issues adult children may encounter as their parents age, for instance, how to coax a parent to stop driving when the parent can no longer do so sa...

» This book was excellent. I was having such a time dealing emotionally with my parent's behaviour and was trying to use strategies that just were'nt working. Now I know why. I've changed my strategi...

» As a stressed out adult child of a mother who has been lapsing into dementia for the past 6 years, I found this book to be a great resource. It's a great combination of theory and highlighted points ...

» A lot of real life information. Chapters 3 and 4 described my mother-in-law to a tee. A lot of good suggestions on handling interactions and keeping conversations productive and moving forward.

How to Care for Aging Parents (Morris, How to Care for Aging)
by Virginia Morris, Robert M. Butler
Amazon Price: $12.89
Customer Reviews:
» This book is an exceptional reference for anyone who may care for an elder, who is taking care of their elder, making funeral arrangements for them, or who is settling their estate. It is comprehensi...

» I was alerted to this book by a friend. Originally, I used a library copy, but decided it was so full of information I may need in the future that I purchased my own copy for reference. It is the m...

» This book was recommended to me by a co-worker who had dealt with the illness and eventual death of her father-in-law. It provided so much excellent practical information that I used immediately in ca...

» A friend recommended this book--excellent resource on a variety of subjects. I've referred to it several times, finding a topic and reading that chapter. I bought one for me and a second one for my ...

» This is exactly what I needed. All the answers to questions I hadn't even thought of! GREAT BOOK!!

The Complete Eldercare Planner, Second Edition: Where to Start, Which Questio...
by Joy Loverde
Amazon Price: $13.57
Customer Reviews:
» This book is full of clear, common-sense talk, just the thing I needed when I bought it. Dealing with an aging parent can be tricky in the best of circumstances, and at worst can threaten the whole f...

» For those who have been, or will be, managing the health and financial welfare of your elderly parents, this book provides very helpful and detailed guidelines on how to do this with tact and compassi...

» "Am I doing the right thing?" Every adult child of a family member requiring eldercare asks this question. The Complete Eldercare Planner will help today's busy caregivers with medical, financial, and...

» 7-22-05 -- Recently I found myself along with 3 other siblings and spouses thrust into new uncharted waters in a totally new season of our lives. Suddenly and without any training we were and continu...

» My mother in law needs so much care and we had no clue on what to do. We bought this book and we bought the 36-Hour day. We are completely sure now that we are making the right choices because of the ...

Measure of the Heart: A Father's Alzheimer's, A Daughter's Return
by Mary Ellen Geist
Amazon Price: $16.31
Customer Reviews:
» This nonfiction book is about a daughter who quits her job to move back home to help her mother care for her father who has Alzheimers. Reading this is an enjoyable way to learn about Alzheimers, wha...

» What a wonderful book about Mary Ellen Geist who gives up her high paying job as a reporter, her lifestyle and all she knows to move back with her mom to take care of her dad who has Alzheimers. This...

» Hope. Grief. Frustration. Exhaustion. Delight. Denial. Mary Ellen Geist touches on all these emotions and many more in her account of dealing with her father's struggle with Alzheimer's disease. She p...

» Mary Ellen Geist left a stellar career as a radio broadcaster to move home and help her mother take care of her father, Woody, a sufferer of Alzheimer's. She did not know, could not know what she was ...

» As lifespans lengthen, it's an unfortunate reality that more and more of us are likely to encounter the tragedy of Alzheimer's Disease. In "Measure of the Heart," ambitious, successful California and ...

A Thousand Acres: A Novel
by Jane Smiley
Amazon Price: $10.17
Customer Reviews:
» On a thousand-acre ranch in Iowa, a family compound of three farmhouses in close proximity to one another contains an aging father and two of his three daughters, along with their families.

» I really enjoyed this book. The characters are interesting and the setting on an Iowa farm is very intriguing and different. I found that this was very hard to put down - a very fast read, and a ver...

» As a work of literary fiction, the prose was not particularly well-written and the characters were at best a collection of stereotypes. Most glaringly, I felt as though this was taking place now and ...

» This book takes a while to get to the action, but it was well worth the wait.

The narrative is so compelling that I found myself getting caught up in what was happening to the heroine. I...

» Way-too-human darker side of the many facets of the Midwest farm life, plus some deeply satisfying glimpses into its regional and natural history. A good read. I guess Smiley did create a very well-de...

Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders
by Mary Pipher
Amazon Price: $10.20
Customer Reviews:
» Fantastic Book! It changed my life about my attitude toward thinking about growing old. I would recommend it highly to anyone: I have recommended it to several friends and also 2 of my book clubs a...

» I purchased this book as a requirement for one of my senior level college courses. Normally, I would not have enjoyed reading required text for class; however, this book grabbed me from page one -- I...

» I thought I'd find myself in this book, but I am neither old enough nor young enough to fit either model. Neverless I loved the book, and wwhat I remember most vividly are the poems, especially the o...

» The author of the bestseller Reviving Ophelia this times takes us on a journey through the lives of our elders. Following the lead of Bernice Neugarten at the University of Chicago, she distinguishes ...

» This book is written in a readable style that holds your interest. I bought it to help understand my elderly father who is suffering from dementia, but I found it told me a lot about myself and what ...

How to Say It to Seniors: Closing the Communication Gap with Our Elders
by David Solie
Amazon Price: $10.85
Customer Reviews:
» Within the first 30 pages of reading this book, the way I viewed my aging parents and the manner of communicating with them from then on changed 180 degrees. I understood their viewpoints and what th...

» Sheds light on why it can be so hard, and frustrating, to talk with our parents and other seniors and, offers recommendations for overcoming communication barriers - theirs and ours.

» I had been feeling as if my 89 year old father was from a different planet than I, one where he spoke a language I did not understand (I called it Oldmanistan). After reading Mr. Solie's book, I was ...

» Some good ideas but often couched in cliches and occasional jargon. I suppose like any self-help book, if you pick up one or two new approaches to communication, it's worth the money. I think it ...

» By profession I am an estate planner. I have ushered both parents from this earth after confronting their very real crises in their search for answers in what their limited future would hold for the...

Elder Rage, or Take My Father... Please!: How to Survive Caring for Aging Par...
by Jacqueline Marcell
Amazon Price: $16.47
Customer Reviews:
» This book is a valuable resource to anyone who is caring for an elderly family member. While reading the often funny, always touching, occasionally horrifying memoir, I learned so much about caring f...

» This is an excellent book for those who find themselves frustrated by the behavior of elders who are suffering from just enough dementia to be wreaking havoc, but not enough to be institutionalized. I...

» As a professional caregiver coordinator for a local Area Agency on Aging I read a lot of books on caregiving and Alzheimer's disease. This is the best book I have read on the subject. The story is t...

» I got this wonderful book about a year after my mom passed. I still refer to it so much that it is dog-eared, for information, resources and to enjoy Jackie's humorous writing style. (Okay, I admit ...

» This is a good book for anyone trying to help elderly parents. I found the style of writing, relating all things to old tv shows, sometimes distracting and confusing but the information in the book wa...