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

(Thank goodness!)

A near-terminal case.

Author David Shields runs this book along parallel and often intersecting tracks. One is a litany of facts regarding the birth, maturation and aging process. The other consists of reflections on his own life and, particularly, the life of his 97-year old father.

Not everyone will find this a novel revelation (Hey - people age and die! Who knew???!) or a fascinating story.

The chapters offering straight biological facts and others that consist of a multipage succession of quotations seem like "filler," a data vomit.

"The Thing About Life" stops just short of being a complete waste of time. Not a terrible book, but bordering on the lame-oh...Hence the three-star rating.

The author's obsession with death is revealed throughout the book. The interesting question is: `Do atheists and theists view death in the same light?' If you read books by saints or religious people, you'll find that indeed they welcome death. Death to them is not an end but a beginning. At death, we are reunited with our loved ones. The world of the dead is another world where we are as much alive as in this world.

Throughout our body, since conception, a process of birth and death is taking place every second--new cells are born while old ones die. Our body is attuned to the constant bombardment of birth and death taking place, yet we--the part that is not the body (call it spirit or soul)--are not. Why? Why do some people welcome death while others shun away from it? Would we be scared of dying if there was no love in this world? These are actually very interesting questions to ponder.

A lot of the book was about the author's relationship with his father. I found some chapters slow. I wanted the author to go more into the core of life and death. Maybe I missed something. Maybe the author wanted us to learn about death through his relationship with his father. If he did, I missed the point. I also found too much personal information about the author and his family that distracted me from the essence of the book. For example, the author talks about his sex life, his girlfriend's herpes, and his acne during his youth. Was the book meant as a biography or a memoir?

I did like the scientific information included, such as the difference in size between a girl's and a boy's brain and the physiology of ageing.

Some interesting chapters in the book:

Our birth is nothing but our death begun: existence is warfare. Human beings have existed for 250,000 years; during that time, 90 billion individuals have lived and died.

Decline and fall: All mammals age; the only animals that don't age are some of the more primitive ones: sharks, alligators, Galapagos tortoises. Schopenhauer said, "Just as we know our walking to be only a constantly prevented falling, so is the life of our body only a constantly prevented dying, an ever-deferred death."

Life is that which gives meaning to life: life is perfected by death.
How to live forever: In ancient Greece, old men were advised to lie down with beautiful virgins.

Towards the end of the book you'll realize that we are not learning how to live, but how to die.

The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead contains a mixture of an autobiography and facts about the body's growing and aging. The stories told and the given facts both humor and depress readers. Rather than linearly cover author David Shields' life from childhood to adulthood sprinkled with quotes and stories about his and his father's lives, the chapters jump around with random thoughts and stories.

One chapter might tell a story about Shields' teen years, or another support facts that his father's quite the stud, while another does nothing but quote statistics. Whether a reader will like this roundabout tactic probably largely depends on the reader's life, age, and gender. The description of Shields' father sowing-oats lifestyle might turn off a woman in her 30s. However, I can relate to some of Shields' writing as a fellow parent. He discusses living and thinking as a father.

Though Shields explores the father-son relationship, it won't tap a female reader's memories much as it would a male's. I recently lost my own father and had a great relationship with him. This book didn't compel me to think about our times together. However, men past their 30s might recall their relationships with their fathers or see hope for them as they age.

Sometimes the reader will think, "Who cares?" or "That's fascinating." Sometimes readers will laugh and sometimes readers will turn depressed at the thought of aging and dying. No matter the age, readers will go through a range of emotions in reading this stream of thoughts writing.

Readers wanting to understand the aging process without the scientific-speak might appreciate Shields' approach with its mix of storytelling and giving facts in a flowy way instead of the way a doctor would describe aging. Shields' writing easily captivates, whether or not readers like the contents.

Shields shares embarrassing and personal things about his teen and adult years that many wouldn't share with anyone. This provides readers -- especially men -- with the opportunity to know they aren't alone in experiencing similar situations. As a woman, I know I would appreciate a female sharing such experiences to confirm I'm not the only one who experienced something or felt a certain way about something.

Truth is - whether you'll like Shields' writing depends on your experiences, taste for a non-linear style book, and the flip-flopping between story and statistics. It should please those who'd love to be fly on the wall in a man's life or read about health and living in the same way as a history book, only without the dull educational writing style that tends to appear in many health and history books.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Some fascinating facts, interwoven with his own father-son story. But kind of depressing and weird. I guess he's a little...cerebral for me.

When I was a child I witnessed the rapid decline and subsequent death of our 15 year old cat. His fur had became dull and rough, you could feel his spine along his back and the sound of the can opener mustered no more than a careful walk to the kitchen: it became suddenly apparent that this once fat yet graceful kitty no longer had that feline spunk.

Awash in my own childhood vitality (I was the same age then as David Shields's daughter is now), I hadn't in fact noticed my cat getting old. Moreover people seemed always the age they were. My grandparents were old people, my older brother was one of the "big kids" and my parents were Adults: all was static.

20+ years later - yesterday - I was throwing a large paper wad to my 5 year old cat and noticed she got bored of the game after about 3 minutes whereas when she was a kitten, I would get bored of the game after 30. Though the process is terribly slow, this time around I can already tell: my cat is dying. And since she's the same age as me in cat years, that means I'm dying too.

The great thing about The Thing About Life is that David Shields compiles a huge list of fascinating factoids about the body and mixes them with very personal memories in such a way that your mind is constantly abuzz with your own life (or your cat's) and mortality. If I'd had his phone number when reading the book I would have called him up just to chat; the book is like a fantasy joint therapy session to vanquish the very real but quite absurd fear of death. By making death (and decay) real, he makes it infinitely more tolerable and thanks to his maddening yet endearing father, the whole process almost looks fun.