Valyruh’s #CBR4 Review #63: Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

This little book is a touching reminder of what makes us truly human: that we have the capacity to love and be loved, to give and to create, to remember, and to be remembered. Tuesdays with Morrie is about a favorite college professor, Morrie Schwartz, who discovers that he is dying of ALS, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and in the process of dying, teaches those around him some universal truths about how to live.

Although he is visited by countless family, friends and former students, it is to former student Mitch Albom that he devotes his Tuesdays to discussing the important things of life, such as culture, love, marriage, money, fear of aging, regrets, and, of course, death. Albom is a highly successful sports writer who, at age 39, is beginning to question his accomplishments and his priorities. One Tuesday visit to his old professor, who he hasn’t seen in 20 years, turns into 14 weekly Tuesday visits with the dying Morrie, who Albom affectionately calls “Coach,” visits that eventually become this book, or his “final senior thesis,” as Albom jokingly puts it.

Morrie is a gentle, funny soul, with enough love and wisdom in him to share with all who come in contact with him. In the course of his Tuesdays with Albom, he tells stories with lessons for all of us, such as learning how to ‘detach’ from emotions like anger, jealousy, and envy, or learning how to embrace aging without regret, since every age incorporates all the other ages within it, or learning how to appreciate life by asking every morning, like the Buddhists, “Am I going to die today?”

The ending of this book is a foregone conclusion, and predictably brought me to tears. The intention of this book is clearly not to glorify death, but rather to revere life and make it worth the living of it.

ElCicco#CBR4Review#24: Memento Mori by Muriel Spark

Memento Mori is a mystery of sorts on aging and death and how people handle it. Some are angry and fight it, seeing death as a hostile enemy. Others accept it, or are resigned to it, or even welcome it.

The story takes place in London in the late 1950s, amongst a group of people in their 70s and 80s who have known each other for decades. Some are in declining health, some are wealthy and successful, others are artist-types or personal staff. Some start receiving phone calls in which an anonymous voice, calling them by name says, “Remember you will die.” Who is calling? Is it a threat? The calls start with Dame Lettie, who is angry about it and suspicious of everyone. Eventually others receive the calls, too, although it seems that everyone hears a different voice and the reactions to these calls also vary. In the course of the novel, past affairs, infidelities, and secrets of the characters are revealed.

The characters are an interesting bunch and  drive this story forward. Dame Lettie is a prison reformer who is bossy and domineering. She is the first to receive the calls, and given her abrasive personality, could have invited this harassment from any one of a number of people. She frequently discusses her will and who will be left in or out of it, using it as a threat/promise to get her way. Jean Taylor seems to see and understand more than others do. Having served as the maid or personal assistant to Charmian (a successful writer suffering from poor health and declining mental faculties), Jean knows many of the secrets of others and has suspicions about the callers. Charmian and her husband Godfrey (Lettie’s brother) have a dysfunctional marriage. Charmian sees that Godfrey resents her success as a writer. As she grows ill, he grows stronger and when she revives, he grows weaker. She knows all his secrets but doesn’t tell him so because his reaction would be anger and resentment for letting him go on feeling guilty. Charmian, however, has a number of secrets of her own. Alec Warner is a gerontologist who constantly pesters his friends to record their temperatures and complexion before and after getting news so that he can keep careful records for his research. Alec is a gossip and enjoys being the one to break important news to the others and then carefully observe their reactions. He also employs others as sources for his research. Alec’s research cards are his life, although it is not clear what ultimate purpose he has for the information. Mrs. Pettigrew is a gold digger and blackmailer who preys on the elderly by offering personal care services although she herself is almost as old as her clients.

A number of other characters are part of the story as well, including Godfrey and Charmian’s no-account son, an art critic, and a retired detective. The end of the story is not what one might normally expect from a mystery, but I found it to be a creative and satisfying resolution. I enjoyed Spark’s writing and characters — witty and dark.

ElCicco#CBR4Review#18: I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron

Writer/director Nora Ephron reflects on her past and aging in this book. It is amusing at times, such as the first chapter entitled “I Feel Bad About My Neck,” noting the havoc that age wreaks upon the body. As she lunches with friends her own age (60-something), she notes that increasingly, they all wear turtlenecks, scarves or mandarin collars to hide the wattle of old age. The second chapter, “I Hate My Purse,” is for women who “understand that their purses are reflections of negligent housekeeping, hopeless disorganization….” The next few chapters move along in a relatively harmless and sometimes funny way, not funny laughing-out-loud like you would at Tina Fey’s book, but enough to put a grin on your face as Ephron writes in her self-deprecating way about food, family, her apartments and her career.

My favorite chapter is called “On Rapture.” In it, Ephron writes about the rapture of discovering a great book, one that you can’t put down and that you read over and over. Some of the books that have given her rapture are Puzo’s “The Godfather,” “The Golden Notebook” by Doris Lessing, “The Woman in White” by Wilkie Collins and “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” by Chabon. I always enjoy reading about the books that writers like to read and getting ideas for something to pick up next, and reading is a topic that Ephron warms to. She does point out, though, that because she is getting older, the pleasures of reading are threatened by her increasingly poor vision and the need to wear reading glasses (which she constantly misplaces).

About two thirds of the way through the book, however, Ephron’s reflections become a bit more serious, even a little depressing in my opinion. In “Me and Bill: The End of Love,” Ephron writes about her disappointment with Bill Clinton for not supporting gays in the military early in his administration and then for his responsibility for the war. Because Bill screwed around with Monica, Al lost the election and thousands have died in a war that Bill has not denounced even as he leads conferences devoted to ending global poverty and preventing needless deaths. “Considering the Alternative,” the final essay, is about death — the death of Ephron’s best friend, her grief at the loss and the inevitability of one’s own death. For Ephron, “… it’s sad to be over sixty. The long shadows are everywhere — friends dying and battling illness.” When a magazine editor, a 60-something woman, approaches her to write about aging and complains that women their age use expressions like “in our day” as if all is past for them, Ephron says, “But it is not our day. It’s their day. We’re just hanging on.” This comment surprised me, given Ephron’s successes, but then I reread what I wrote in my first paragraph of this review, comparing her to Tina Fey, and I sort of get it. In 15-20 years, our comedic “It Girl” Fey will probably feel as Ephron does now, and some new writer will get her turn.

Overall an okay book.

Quorren’s #CBR4 Review #6 Reaper Man by Terry Prachett

Reaper Man is Prachett’s eleventh Discworld book.  Discworld rides the universe on top of four elephants, which stand on the back of the the great turtle, A’Tuin.  In many ways Discworld is an analogue of Earth.  Except for, you know, that being flat and riding on the back of a giant turtle thing.

Discworld novels have several reoccurring characters.  Reaper Man, unsurprisingly, follows Death as the Powers That Be relieve him of his duties.  Death make the mistake of developing a personality, you see.  As a consolation prize, Death was giving a few months of retirement before a new Death could be hired and reap the old one.  However, Discworld wasn’t prepared for a respite from Death.

Windle Poons, the oldest wizard at Unseen University (another group of reoccurring characters) and a stereotypical crotchety old man, is celebrating his death when Death takes a holiday.  For the wizards of Discworld, one of the perks is being personally collected by the big man himself when it’s their time.  Unfortunately, Windle chooses to go as Death leaves office.  After waiting to be collected, Windle decides to hell with this and settles back into his old body.  Windle enters the ranks of the undead, much to the chagrin of the  university staff.  They try several methods of re-deading Windle to no avail.

While Death is my second favorite Discworld character (Luggage is first, with Granny Weatherwax in third), I prefer his cameos over whole novels dedicated to him.  A little bit of Death goes a long way, you know?  Regardless, there can never be a bad Prachett book, just some that are less good than others.

Quorren’s #CBR4 Review #1: The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht

I originally didn’t have much hope for The Tiger’s Wife.  I was flying back home after Christmas and I knew Anansi Boys, my 100th book of 2011, wouldn’t last through my three hour lay over in Philly.  Unfortunately, the bookstore at the Ohio airport is sponsored by Glenn Beck.  In between books written by him or other crazy bigots, there were a few books about animals that I just knew would end in tears, a “gently used” copy of Breaking Dawn that looked like someone had tried to throw it into a jet engine (and rightly so), and The Tiger’s Wife.  So I choose the evil I didn’t know over the evil that makes me foam at the mouth and go into a She Hulk rage.

The book centers on a young doctor named Natalia, who is on a Doctor’s without Borders-like quest.  Natalia’s country, somewhere in the Balkans, has been in repeatedly conflict with…themselves? the country next door? the Muslims?  It’s not very clear; suffice to say, lots of people don’t like other people, possibly over religion.   While on her trip, Natalia receives news that her grandfather is dead.  Natalia was close to her grandfather; he helped raise her and was also a doctor himself.  He had only confided in her his secret battle with cancer.  However, she is surprised to learn that he had been on his way to help her with her doctoring thing when he passed away in a small town no one has ever heard of.  The rest of the story deals with Natalia recounting her grandfather’s stories interspersed with her coping with his death.

Obreht may have started out writing a book about war, but it became more of a book about death, but not in a heavy-handed, maudlin way.  The war just becomes the setting for the stage in a play about people dealing with death.  The grandfather’s stories also give the book a nice “Big Fish” vibe as well.

Also, there’s totally a tiger in it.  (I get annoyed when a title says one thing, but then it turns out the title was some sort of bad metaphor).

Pages:  337

Method of Attainment & Price:  Columbus airport bookstore for free, because my parents were filled with the spirit of Christmas