Two Words, One Answer.
For One More Day
 For One More Day/The Five People You Meet in Heaven/Tuesdays With Morrie (Boxed Set) $33.54 A boxed set of Mitch Albom's Three popular titles - Tuesdays With Morrie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, For One More Day  For One More Day $12.00 When I was a teenager I fought with my mother constantly. Little things, stupid things. One day when I was 17 we came home from school to find her on the floor in a coma, blood oozing out of every oriface in her head. She had had a massive stroke and was never the same again, not just completely paralyzed in a wheelachir but no more short term memory. The only thing she would ever remember all those years afterwards is what had happened before that day. I spent 35 years trying to remember, trying so hard to remember, if I had left for school that day fighting with her. What I wouldn't give to go back to that day. So when I heard the premise of this book, I really looked forward to reading it. What a wasted premise in the hands of an unskilled writer. So shallow, so sterotyped. Such one-dimensional characters. The sainted mother, the distant father, the pathetic slouch, the feisty old women. I kept thinking what a great story this could have been had say John Irving written it (ala the gripping Owen Meaney). I couldn't relate to any of these depthless characters. And any book that has to finish with an 'epilogue' to tell you how things concluded, even in this narrative format, is usually a sure sign of amateurism. I can understand the reviews that said this isn't bad, an interesting short story (which it really was) but all the 5* reviews about how it affected people's lives so deeply? This is so sad, such a clear indicator how dumbed down we are as a society, how shallow we are becoming ourselves. I read fiction that's review-skewed either end - heavy 5* and heavy 1* stars. A book that inspires passion either way, love it or hate it. Dribble like this and that awful "The Shack" (that Christians used to reading pablum can't even recognize as blasphemous)- easily picked-up at Costco for $9.00 - are ruining our minds. I guess this could be a decent beach read, but I would never use it in a serious book discussion.  The Five People You Meet in Heaven $19.95 While this is an incredibly popular book, by an incredibly popular author, I have to say, I found it less than incredible. That is not to say that it was not worth the read, that I gained nothing from it, but it was certainly not a life-changing novella. An intriguing concept, written in a mostly heart-felt way, but it fell short of a mind-blowing experience. I felt like I was being manipulated as a reader, and I can understand that there was a strong point to the story, I think that some of the writing was taken to unnecessary extremes. Perhaps a sequel I might be interested in picking up would be the (five) people Eddie has impacted, and what lessons he passes on to them. |
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