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

I think this is a must for every adult reader who is just plain curious, about the bodys we carry around with us.

I found this book very disappointing.. Not at all what I expected after reading the reviews. Ir was shallow and uninteresting to the nth degree.

David Shields, a gifted writer, fills these pages with both general and personal information about what it means to be a human being. Statistics from the size of the human brain at birth to the difference in growth spurts between boys and girls are included. Did you know your IQ is highest between ages 18 and 25? An exhaustive yet highly readable array of fascinating anatomical facts and social observations make this an unusual collection of essays. It's by nature a memoir, (be prepared to read about a bad case of teenage acne, for example, and a consistent interspersion of "Hoop Dreams"), but the focus reaches beyond mere life stories and experiences, making the material relatable to anyone who breathes--and reads.

In his journey from Infancy and Childhood, through Adolescence, Adulthood and Middle Age and into Old Age and Death, Shields quotes a myriad of authors/philosophers/poets, including Woody Allen, Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, Nietzsche, Dylan Thomas, Vladimir Nabokov, and Jerry Seinfeld, just to name a few. More than anyone else, he's most strongly influenced by his 97-year-old father, to whom the book is dedicated. He ends with "Notes for Eulogy for My Father," but really, the entire book plays out this dedication.

By the way, "David Shields is a great writer and a babe to boot." Even without hair.

Michele Cozzens, Author of A Line Between Friends and The Things I Wish I'd Said.

Full of facts, quotes & life stories, seemed to me that a book with a title like that would be a little more philosophical.

I was very disappointed in this book and found it pointless. It is just a list of how our bodies fall apart as we age, information that we already know. I kept waiting for some new information, or at least some humor, but neither appeared. I would not recommend this book.