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

Funny, factual, cerebral, yet often moving without tear-jerking effects. Beautiful tributes to his father and the lessons learned through their lives together and in parallel.

I was very excited to read this book after I read a review about it in Esquire. I can unquestionably say the best part of the book is the title. After that, the book is a ridicolous post-modern memoir / "what is life about" tome that has no coherent structure, is extremely boring, and is clearly written by someone who felt the need to prove he was some sort of "insightful" writer.

I rarely stop reading books and I gave this book three (3) separate tries but I could not get past page 80. It is just a boring read and the author tries to use this absurd Joycean time pattern structure of moving back and forth through different parts of his and his father's life that prevents the book from having sort of flow.

I recognize Mr. Shields put a lot of work into this and I hesitate being so critical, but this book was extremely disappointing and I was actually upset I wasted $20 on it.

It kind of puts you in that river that sweeps you toward the end. It gets you thinking of all the things that can go wrong and lead to the stopping of your heart.

That said, there are plenty of interesting facts on every page. All this with a twist of sad humor.

Rarely do I not finish a book. I made an exception in this book. I was expecting a book of soulful insight and instead found a book of disjointed information presented in an awkward way. The further I read, the greater my sense that this book was not going anywhere. Finally, I stopped mid-chapter. Where was this author's editor?

I found this book to drag on and on and provide useless information. Yes the author did do a lot of research in finding the facts but the book itself was a huge let-down. It is about a young man and his stages of life, but chooses very bad stories that have facts in them. It goes back and forth about his relationship of his dad. It also tells many stores that the reader does not want to know. (i was thinking T.M.I. a few times) Im very mad at myself for buying it in a book store and spending $23 on it. It was a waste of money and of my time. I normally never stop reading a book unless im done with it. Although for this book, about 3/4 of the way through i really couldnt take it anymore and stopped reading it. It was that bad. Basically, it is a book about facts listed off in paragraphs. I saw no "inspirational messages" and it did not get me to look at life in a different way like all the reviews on the back had said. Dont waste ur time reading this!