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Book Reviews of The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead

The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead
The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead
Author: David Shields
ISBN-13: 9780739499146
ISBN-10: 0739499149
Publication Date: 2/5/2008
Pages: 256
Rating:
  • Currently 3/5 Stars.
 2

3 stars, based on 2 ratings
Publisher: Knopf
Book Type: Paperback
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

2 Book Reviews submitted by our Members...sorted by voted most helpful

GrandmaDiDi avatar reviewed The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead on
Helpful Score: 1
Very interesting book. Part memoir, part autobiography (about the author's father) and full of interesting facts about aging and dying.
reviewed The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead on + 39 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
This humorous and immensely informative book follows the human life from birth to death. Told with self-deprecating humor, Shields frames the book both within his own middle-age ascendency along with his aged father who for so long seemed to defy the odds of dying.

Reading this book I often felt a sense of voyeurism, looking with morbid fascination at my own disturbing future unfolding before my eyes. Truly, it is not death I fear, but the dying. This book did little to disconfirm that fear; it only brought to light the gory details. Shields, however, only describes the physical failings scheduled into the aging process. For me, such an account reinforces the deep desire to live life truly lived well in spite of and because of the valley of the shadow lying ahead. As the psalmist wrote, My flesh and heart may fail me... BUT...

The rest of the psalm is full of hope. Momento Mori, but Carpe Diem. Aaah... those Latin blokes are full of wisdom.