Nevermore: The Irish Game, Being Mortal, Shattered Genius, Good Advice, and Assorted Cats

There are only two privately held paintings by Vermeer in the world.  The Queen of England owns one.  The other is held by a family in Ireland.  In The Irish Game, Matthew Hart tells the true story of how the Irish painting was stolen, recovered, and then stolen again.  The book won rave reviews from our Nevermore reader who found it a fascinating tale and one well told.  The author brings together a number of subjects which had a bearing on the case: security systems, art history, Irish politics, international crime, art restoration, gangs, and even illegal drugs. The book comes highly recommended.

Also highly recommended was Being Mortal:  Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande.  Gawande believes that modern medicine and culture focus more on sustaining life at the end than in making the last years or months comfortable and pleasant.  He explores what makes life enjoyable for an elderly person and how nursing homes, hospice, assisted living, and family caregivers fail or succeed. He asserts the need for quality of life and for the elderly to still be allowed to make their own decisions.  Our reviewer found it both thought-provoking and enlightening, and Amazon.com readers agree: 87% of readers gave it five stars and another 11 % gave it four.

On a similar theme, an older book by Dr. David Dosa also asks some of these same questions.  Making Rounds with Oscar is ostensibly about Oscar, a nursing home cat who seemed to know when someone was in his last hours.  Dr. Dosa wrote a paper about Oscar which drew international attention, encouraging him to look further.  He does, but much of the book examines how the elderly are treated by both institutional personnel and by families.  I found it to be a thoughtful book, one which made me not only think about how elderly relatives had been treated but also how I would like to be treated myself one day.  It’s a low-key, non-threatening book, which makes it ideal to start a conversation.

Shattered Genius by David Storm examines the German General Staff which began when the area was still Prussia.  It was a group of officers who were selected on merit and who studied all aspects of warfare, and which proved extremely effective throughout the nineteenth century.  World War I was their first great defeat and, in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles, they were disbanded.  However, there was a core group who remained active in a different guise and was ready to be utilized.  Much of the book is devoted to the World War II General Staff and their relationship with Hitler.  Our reviewer enjoyed the book and proposed a longer review later.

In a lighter vein, Zac Bissonnette has been good enough to compile a collection of Good Advice from Bad People:  Selected Wisdom from Murderers, Stock Swindlers, and Lance Armstrong.  Bissonnette has a brief quotation from a person, and then follows it with a short biography of the person which demonstrates that he or she does the opposite. Our reviewer thought it was a lot of fun, and a good, quick read.

She also recommended Careers for Your Cat by Ann Dziemianowics which details how you can determine what profession would best suit your cat.  She even provides a Meowers-Briggs Personality test to help you determine if your cat is living up to his or her potential. Our reviewer said that while she only laughed out loud a couple of times, it did make her smile a lot, and she recommends it as a fun book.  Note:  both the books listed above were downloaded from the library’s READs program!

Nevermore: Prague Cemetery, Lone Wolf, & Making Rounds with Oscar

The Nevermore Book Club had another lively meeting! The first topic of conversation was an article from Newsweek which compared the New York Times Best Seller List of March, 1966 to the list for March, 2012.  It made for an interesting discussion.  A slideshow version of the article can be accessed online here: Newsweek 1966 vs. 2012

Books discussed included The Prague Cemetery  by Umberto Eco.  Eco is best known for The Name of the Rose, a literate mystery set in a monastery.  His new novel continues to mix history, linguistics and mystery as Captain Simonini, an amnesiac with a talent for forgery and hate, is writing down his thoughts in an effort to discover who he is and why he has lost his memory. The book teems with plots, conspiracies, shadowy figures, and more twists and turns than the Paris sewers.

Lone Wolf is the new novel by Jodi Picoult in which two siblings, Cara and Edward, are faced with making end of life choices for their father, Luke. The story switches back and forth from the present to the family's past, when Luke spent a great deal of time researching wolves.  Picoult is known for her ability to take controversial issues and frame them within a very human situation, but our reader was underwhelmed; she didn’t care for the way the story switched back and forth from the human family to the wolves.

Another club member was reading the non-fiction book Making Rounds with Oscar by Dr. David Dosa which deals with some of the same issues addressed in Picoult’s book.  Oscar the cat resides in a nursing home and gained fame for his seeming ability to know when a patient is near death.  It’s been claimed that Oscar is more accurate than the doctors and nurses. Intrigued, Dosa decided to document Oscar’s behavior to see if there was indeed a correlation.  The resulting book is mostly anecdotal evidence, but its real value is the way Dosa brings up questions about quality of life and care issues in a non-threatening, non-confrontational manner.  

 The Nevermore Book Club meets every Tuesday at 11:00 AM in the Frances E. Kegley Conference Room.  Doughnuts are supplied by the Blackbird Bakery!

Oscar the End of Life Cat

Making Rounds with Oscar by David Dosa (362.1767 DOS Main)
Reviewed by Jeanne

Not too long ago, the news services and internet sites were all agog over “Oscar the Death Cat.”According to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, this cat seemed to know which patients were near death and would sit with them until they passed.The article claimed that in some cases the cat’s prediction was more accurate than the doctor’s assessment of how long a patient would live.


Dr. David Dosa wrote the original article which he has now expanded into a book.He is a physician and researcher who specializes in the needs of the elderly. His work often takes him to Steere House, a nursing and rehabilitation center with a large number of older patients, many of whom have various forms of dementia. The staff tries to keep them as comfortable and content as possible.To this end, Steere House has cats to make the patients feel more at home. One cat, Oscar, isn’t exactly a lap cat: he’s independent, permitting petting on his own terms, and not overly affectionate. He swats Dr. Dosa when he tries to pet him and isn’t particularly sociable with patients.


Yet according to the staff, he keeps a vigil over the dying by lying next to them, purring.He seems driven to do this, pacing outside doors, anxious to get in and to do his duty. Some who have experienced such a scenario believe that Oscar is bringing comfort not only to the patient but also to the soon to be bereaved.


Dr. Dosa becomes intrigued and sets out to interview staff and families of those Oscar attended. There are some theories, some interesting stories—such as what happened once when two patients were dying at the same time—but the focus of the book subtly shifts from the mystery of Oscar to a bit of a meditation about the end of life. He describes the various patients and their families. Some are adult children, trying to balance care of their own families with caring for their parents; some are elderly spouses struggling to meet the needs of an impaired partner. Dr. Dosa presents a sympathetic portrait of all concerned, but gently raises questions about what we expect and what we should expect about end of life care. He doesn’t lecture or judge, but he does make you think.

At the same time, Dr. Dosa examines the human/animal bond. Many nursing homes and other care facilities have found that having an animal around is comforting to patients.There are many theories as to why this is so. Perhaps it’s because an animal makes the facility seem less institutional and less impersonal; perhaps it’s because an animal doesn’t ask any questions or make any complicated demands, or maybe evokes memories of earlier times. Whatever the reasons, most people do seem to respond positively.

Part of the book’s effectiveness is that Dr. Dosa discusses his own feelings. He’s relatively young, but already experiencing a few health problems. He’s beginning to think about what he wants for himself when the time comes. He made me think about what I want, too. A patron who read the book said she was inspired to go ahead and take some action to ensure that her wishes are carried out.

That’s a pretty impressive accomplishment for a slim little book.

Much to my surprise, I finished the book with a positive outlook. I’d met a lot of good people: staff, patients, caregivers. I’d met one amazing cat, Oscar. I’d faced what could have been a big, scary, depressing subject and come away feeling empowered.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with an aged relative—or to anyone who aspires to become a senior citizen at some point.