Skip to main content

Book Review: The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

By
One of those books where the author
is bigger than the title...
     I read this book for the title.  How could I not?  I want to be as informed about the afterlife as possible, since someday I'm going to spend quite a lot of time there.  
     This book has a very interesting conception of the afterlife.  There's a God and a Heaven, but God doesn't make an appearance and Heaven is not a place of eternal rest and harp music.  Instead, Heaven is where the deceased meet with five people who influenced their lives.  From these people, the dead learn why their lives played out the way that they did.  Five People follows the journey of just one man, an amusement park maintenance employee named Eddie, through Heaven.
     I like Albom's Heaven, and the book's ending was satisfying.  But I didn't love its overall tone .  It felt preachy.  You know, everything happens for a reason.  A Chicken-Soup-for-the-Soul kind of tone.  But hey, lots of people love Chicken Soup for the Soul!  You might like this one better than I did.

      - Carly
Labels:

Comments

  1. KeitSeptember 20, 2015 at 11:07 AM

    Weeeeell, books about God and whatnot do tend to get preachy sooner or later, so no surpise there! :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownSeptember 23, 2015 at 6:44 PM

    Great Review - Tuesday's With Maury is a great book from Mitch Album.
    He is a great sports writer with the Detroit Free Press

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for talking to me!! I wish you lots of good books and brownies!

Popular posts from this blog

Junkie Metaphors and Books About Our Inner Crazy

By
    So, recently I was doing a spot of (mandatory) community service for my gym teacher when I experienced a rare instance of karmic payoff.      Me and a bunch of other temporary bond-slaves were unloading this huge file cabinet onto the gym floor, sorting everything from Dance Revolution DVDs to pamphlets on Your First Visit to the Ob-Gyn! into neat piles, when I uncovered quite by chance a crumbling copy of Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs.  Elated, I carried it around for the remainder of the period until my teacher took pity on me and offered to let me borrow it. It's falling apart before my very eyes I swear...      I fell in love with this book the moment I heard its title quite a while ago - Naked Lunch ?  What the hell kind of weird awesome twisted name is that?  I am only now realizing how twisted it really is.  The book is a compilation of notes that Burroughs took while under the sick influence of heroin. ...
5 comments
Read more

Lessons to be Learned From the Princess Sara Crewe

By
          Have any of you read  A Little Princess  by Frances Hodgson Burnett?  It was the book that made me love books.  (Does every book-lover have one of those?  Do you?)  I first read it when I was very little and have spent the last two days rereading it, as I tend to do every few years.             But the thing that struck me about the story this time around is that the story's preteen heroine, Sara Crewe, seems to have life completely figured out.  Even when she loses both her father and her fortune and is working as a hated scullery maid at her London boarding school to pay off her debts, she never sacrifices her virtues of benevolence, hope, and grace.  Her secret is that she considers herself a princess in spirit, even when she is no longer as wealthy and privileged as one.  Sadly, I have not yet gotten my life philosophies together and lack Sara's ability to gracefull...
4 comments
Read more

Goals for Book-Loving Losers

By
A mini-library in Park Slope, Brooklyn - GOD it's so cute      For me, this time of year means nonstop action - essays, tests, cross-country practices, holidays, and rushed, chilly walks to the subway.  I like being busy, but often when I'm studying and hurrying I find myself fantasizing about the all reading I'd do if I had any spare time.  I think I would be much more educated and cultured if my teachers just shut me up in a room with a load of books, rather than expecting me to come to school.  Oh well.      Here are my fantasy reading goals for sometime when I have more time.  (And if you happen to have a lot of time right now, why not attempt one?) 1. Read a ridiculously long book - War and Peace , or the Bible, or the entirety of that endless series about feral cat colonies, Warriors - and admit to yourself that you're mostly reading it so that you can tell people you read it. 2. Go camping/sit in a shed/climb up a tree/ac...
3 comments
Read more