What I've Been Reading

So anyone who knows me well knows that I love to read. Once upon a time the only books you could catch me reading for pleasure were romance novels. Romance novels are very hit and miss, but when you've got small children sometimes you like a bit of escapism and an 'easy' read. About 12 months ago however, a friend of mine got me thinking about some serious topics so my choice of reading has changed dramatically over the course of that time.......mainly because I love to learn about new things, especially if it impacts on how I parent.

This 'review' if you will isn't about parenting though, well not directly anyhow. When my dad died there were a lot of complex and heart wrenching decisions that had to be made. One of the hardest ones was deciding how far he, and we, were willing to go to prolong his life; or as we viewed it his suffering. So I was having a nosy in the local library, as you do here because to buy books is just too expensive and I stumbled upon a book purely by accident. It is called "Rethinking Life and Death, The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics" by Peter Singer. I don't usually read books that cover 'serious' topics, but as it is something that I have had to deal with personally and that I think about regularly I thought that it might make for an interesting read and it did.

I won't go into great detail about what is in it, one because it would take forever and two it's quite complex. The basic premise though is that it looks to redefine what it means to be alive and dead and how that applies in allowing people to die with dignity, with assistance if necessary, instead of keeping people alive for as long as possible just because you can and it's what you are 'supposed to do'. It tackles things like our current understanding of what it means to be alive and what it means to be dead and how changing the way we think can make it easier for some people to die with the dignity they want and deserve instead of being forced to go on living when it's not what they want. He certainly asked some hard questions and challenges you to think outside the box when it comes to issues that deal with life and death, not just in defining what those two words mean, but how the quality of the life you are living doesn't usually enter into the equation when it comes to getting the death that you want. There's quite a bit about euthanasia in it and the controversy that surrounds it as well as the very different views on it depending on where in the world you live.

So definitely worth a read in my estimation, if you are interested in that sort of thing of course.