Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" The Authorized Graphic Adaptation by Miles Hyman

And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman

  This is a simple little nugget. At only 76 pages, it's easily consumed in one sitting. I spent the last 20 in near-uglycry. Written to help the author understand his own struggles with the loss and dementia of those close to him, this hit super close to home. My grandfather spent his last 15 years locked in by Alzheimer's and my dad is currently battling the middle stages of Parkinson's. Surely I'll use some of these lines to cope in the next few years. 

(*sidenote: i'm super impressed by the author's grasp of English. if i didn't know that he was Swedish, i wouldn't know. most works by Swedish authors, translated or not, are grammatically and idiomatically hogwash.)

  "Tell me about school Noahnoah," the old man says. 

  He always wants to know everything about school, but not like other adults, who only want to know if Noah is behaving. Grandpa wants to know if the school is behaving. It hardly ever is. 

  "Our teacher made us write a story about what we want to be when we're big," Noah tells him. 

  "What did you write?" 

  "I wrote that I wanted to concentrate on being little first." 

  "That's a very good answer." 

  "Isn't it? I would rather be old than a grown-up. All grown-ups are angry, it's just children and old people who laugh." 

"Almost all grown adults walk around full of regret over a good-bye they wish they'd been able to go back and say better. Our good-bye doesn't have to be like that, you'll be able to keep redoing it until it's perfect. And once it's perfect, that's when your feet will touch the ground and I'll be in space, and there won't be anything to be afraid of."

  "What does it feel like?" 

  "Like constantly searching for something in your pockets. First you lose the small things, then it's the big ones. It starts with keys and ends with people."

  "Are you scared?" 

  "A bit, Are you?"

  "A bit," the boy admits.

  Grandpa grins. 

  "That'll keep the bears away." 

  "When you've forgotten a person, do you forget you've forgotten?"

  "No, sometimes I remember that I've forgotten. That's the worst kind of forgetting. Like being locked out in a storm. Then I try to force myself to remember harder, so hard that the whole square here shakes."

"It's a never-ending rage, being angry at the universe." 

  "And I don't think you need to be scared of forgetting me," the boy says after a moment's consideration. "...Because if you forget me then you'll just get the chance to get to know me again. And you'll like that, because I'm actually a pretty cool person to get to know."