I have a VERY good reason for not having already read the five people you meet in heaven by Mitch Albom (2003) before embarking on this 100ish book project.
I love Mitch Albom's writing, I love his heart and I've read his other books, but something about this book flashed NO NO NO NO NO! DO NOT READ! to me.
Silently of course.
I respect books, so I listened and stayed away.
When my student (Eduardo) handed me his copy of the book earlier this semester, it didn't flash NO NO NO.
Instead, I swear to you, it twinkled a little, like it had been waiting for me.
I brought it home with me for Spring Break and put it on a counter so it could watch me empty out closets and do all sorts of fun things that professors do during their 28th consecutive Spring Break.
The first sentence hooked me. "This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end..." Yayy! I LOVE stories that do that!
So Eddie dies but not so much because everyone knows death isn't real, right (right?).
And so Eddie dies-ish, and goes to heaven and meets 5 people who help him understand his life bette and teach him a lesson he needs to heal and move on to the next part of what comes left in this unbroken continuum of life. It killed me (killed me) to not mark up the best quotes in this oh-so-quotable book, so I jotted only my most favorite twinkly bits of wisdom from this book:
Mitch Albom understands sports and paced this book like a great ballgame.
The first three people (innings?) Eddie meets (plays?) in heaven touched me and made me think, but they didn't make me cry.
Then comes person number four and I can't hold back the tears. The bases are loaded and then person number five visits Eddie.
It can't be. It is. Oh. OH. YESSSSS!!!!! GRAND SLAM HOME RUN!!!!!
I can't stop crying and if you read the book you know why.
I won't ruin it for you.
I might ruin Grey's Anatomy (he dies!) or House of Cards (she dies!) or The Fault in Our Stars (death!) but not this book, my new favorite book.
See you in heaven*
I love Mitch Albom's writing, I love his heart and I've read his other books, but something about this book flashed NO NO NO NO NO! DO NOT READ! to me.
Silently of course.
I respect books, so I listened and stayed away.
When my student (Eduardo) handed me his copy of the book earlier this semester, it didn't flash NO NO NO.
Instead, I swear to you, it twinkled a little, like it had been waiting for me.
I brought it home with me for Spring Break and put it on a counter so it could watch me empty out closets and do all sorts of fun things that professors do during their 28th consecutive Spring Break.
The first sentence hooked me. "This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end..." Yayy! I LOVE stories that do that!
So Eddie dies but not so much because everyone knows death isn't real, right (right?).
And so Eddie dies-ish, and goes to heaven and meets 5 people who help him understand his life bette and teach him a lesson he needs to heal and move on to the next part of what comes left in this unbroken continuum of life. It killed me (killed me) to not mark up the best quotes in this oh-so-quotable book, so I jotted only my most favorite twinkly bits of wisdom from this book:
- “There are no random acts...We are all connected...You can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind...”
- “Each affects the other, and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.”
- “No story sits by itself, Sometimes stories meet at corners and sometimes they cover one another completely, like stones beneath a river.”
- “Life has to end. Love doesn't.”
Mitch Albom understands sports and paced this book like a great ballgame.
The first three people (innings?) Eddie meets (plays?) in heaven touched me and made me think, but they didn't make me cry.
Then comes person number four and I can't hold back the tears. The bases are loaded and then person number five visits Eddie.
It can't be. It is. Oh. OH. YESSSSS!!!!! GRAND SLAM HOME RUN!!!!!
I can't stop crying and if you read the book you know why.
I won't ruin it for you.
I might ruin Grey's Anatomy (he dies!) or House of Cards (she dies!) or The Fault in Our Stars (death!) but not this book, my new favorite book.
See you in heaven*
