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

This book is really good, it has different sorts of segments in it. For instance: Origins, Paradise, Soon Lost, Motherhood, Dying just a Little and many more. I'm learning a lot from it.

The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead I found this book to be very disappointing. There are endless facts and statistics about aging but very little commentary or evaluation to pull it all together. Also the author is extremely egotistical and uses every opportuntiy to try to convince us how great he is; e.g., in sports, intelligence, whatever. I absolutely do not recommend this book and think it is a big waste of time.

David Shields has accomplished something extraordinary. While at once it's clear you are reading a book that delves with humor, intelligence and heart into the truth of our own finite time here on earth --this in itself a rare accomplishment -- what I think the book accomplishes is far beyond this. I found myself reading "The thing about life..." and feeling this profound undertow. By reading his words about himself, his family, his father, life and death, I could feel it touch this unspoken place of appreciation of life in myself that was visceral. It's as if his words --knowingly, but below the surface somehow --began to loosen the everpresent, but mostly unuttered grip that life (and fear of its opposite) has on me. It was so evocative (this undertow) I had to read the book in segments, needing to digest the experience and what he'd brought me to next. He gets at that place where one is able to wrestle with one's own complicated, beautiful, scary confusion about life and death. And the stories so distilled and unguarded, I was engaged, not knowing until later that he had opened this poignant place in me YET AGAIN. This is a gift which signals not just beautiful non-fiction, but art.

With so much anecdotal info on the author's life (the glory days of his youth, especially involving basketball), his ninety-seven-year old journalist father's (including excerpts from his articles), his daughter's, and less frequently, his wife's, the book reads a bit like a memoir/family history. But it's the way Shields expertly weaves the age at death of a few famous individuals; quotes; and interesting data, factoids and trivia about the aging process of the human body into the personal part that is so refreshingly different. And the fact that he can laugh at his decreasing abilities and increasing age-related limitations, notably his bad back, gives the book a lighthearted, humorous slant (stories of fellow lap swimmers at Green Lake Community Center are especially funny). But Professor Shields seems a little full of himself in his younger, skilled fit athlete days, as well as unable or unwilling to resist providing unnecessarily overly-personal information. I, for one, am not interested in knowing: the length of his certain male body part, what was showing on the porn station one day as he and his father channel surfed, and about his elderly father's prowess in the bedroom. Loved the concept, facts, and quotes. Hated the bragging, paternal journalistic excerpts, and that which most readers would prefer not to know. Also good: The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen, The Wheel of Life by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom.

There is so much I like about this book! The way Shields captures the complexity of his relationship with his father is universal, relatable, funny, and real all at the same time. I would recommend this book to anybody confronting aging, knows somebody confronting aging, or someone not confronting anything at all! This is a wonderful read!