OCTOBER 11 2012

When New York publisher Will Schwalbe’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, he went with her to her treatments. To while away the time in the hospital they distracted themselves with talk of the books they’d read and shared and recommended and, in Will’s case, sometimes pretended to read.

But while you might pretend to a bookseller you’ve read a book you don’t pretend to your mother who is dying of cancer.  So they read and re-read and explored that particular bond of books they’d always shared.  Thus was born a very special book club with just two members: a mother and a son.

If you love books about books, enjoyed The Last Lecture, Tuesdays with Morrie and Reading Lolita in Tehran, then The End of Your Life Book Club could be for you…

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Watch a video of Will discussing The End of Your Life Book Club at our February book club, below.
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Here are some of the books that Will and his mother read and shared and loved, which we’ve been  reading  as part of our Two Roads book club: A Fine Balance, A Long Way Gone, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Brooklyn, The Year of Magical Thinking, Crossing to Safety, St Joan, Suite Francaise, The Uncommon Reader, The Last Lecture, Olive Kitteridge, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and The Price of Salt.

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Mary Anne Schwalbe was the Founding Director of the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, which is affiliated with the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and founder of the IRC/UK.
 As part of her work with refugees she travelled to 27 countries, often during wartime. She spoke at conferences all over the world and received several major humanitarian honours.

She attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in 1955 and worked in the theatre for ten years.  She and her husband spent much of their time in the UK from 1976 to 2007.

Mary Anne died in September 2009.

Photo of Will Schwalbe courtesy of Elena Seibert

Will Schwalbe is the founder and CEO of Cookstr, a recipe site that features great chefs and authors.  He is the former senior vice president, editor in chief of Hyperion.

Prior to that he was the senior vice president and editor in chief of William Morrow.  Bestselling authors Will has worked with include Mitch Albom, Linda Greenlaw, and David Halberstam.  He is the co-author of Send a book on email etiquette.

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“We write to make sense of it all.”

(Wallace Stegner, author of Crossing to Safety)