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May 2021
11:16am, 4 May 2021
59,653 posts
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Diogenes
Well, that just makes my point for me: it's all the right letters, but not necessarily in the right order.
Or is it Aplomb?
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May 2021
11:28am, 4 May 2021
46,777 posts
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LindsD
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May 2021
12:16pm, 4 May 2021
59,655 posts
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Diogenes
Five heaven hacks to help you ace the afterlife. Coffin-dodgers in your area are going crazy for these rigor mor-tips.
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May 2021
12:19pm, 4 May 2021
46,779 posts
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LindsD
You won't believe number 666!
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May 2021
1:50pm, 4 May 2021
21,737 posts
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Serendippily
There is a risk choosing a book blind on the basis of publication year and making others read it. However as you’ve all chosen not to read it I haven’t really wasted any of your time
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May 2021
8:21am, 6 May 2021
5,085 posts
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westmoors
A very quick and easy read. The style was different to anything I've read before and was an interesting way to relate a life story. I quite enjoyed it so gave it an 8.
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May 2021
8:09pm, 6 May 2021
4,755 posts
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12barDavid
I'm giving it 8 as well.
Our youngest daughter recommended the book & I really enjoyed it. As westmoors said, it was an interesting way to tell a life story.
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May 2021
8:12pm, 6 May 2021
21,761 posts
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Serendippily
Oh good I’m glad you both liked it
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May 2021
1:34pm, 11 May 2021
49,385 posts
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McGoohan
So.... with all this love for the book, I thought it was time to come in like the spectre at the feast and micturate on the french fries. This is what I wrote when I read this book and blogged about it in, gosh, 2016.
"This is a novel by one Mitch Albom, his first I believe, though he’s since stoked up the furnace and churned out several more. TFPYMIH is ‘acclaimed’. 794 reviews on Amazon, 517 being 5-star and only 32 being 1-star. I read this on a suggestion by my sister-in-law who must really hate me. It was the choice at her book club and she was the only one out of the entire group who didn’t like it.
The story concerns Eddie who dies on his 83rd birthday. He dies in an accident trying to save the life of a little girl about to be squished by a roller coaster. Oh no! He finds that Heaven isn’t what he expected, but is a series of 5 meetings with people who have affected, or been affected by, his life. Each will put part of his history in context and teach him a valuable lesson about himself.
No. Stop. Suppress that gag reflex.
The big fat G word is hiding behind all of this of course but Albom was at this stage a bit coy about enGoddenating things too obviously. His later books, God Is Lovely, Fuck Off Atheists and Let’s Burn Richard Dawkins In A Giant Wicker Man have made his position clearer. Still, it’s circumspect enough in TFPYMIH.
It took me just over a day to read. In many ways it’s well-written: to make something flow so well from first page to last takes some skill. Also it works on one of its levels at least: it provokes an emotional response. Throughout the book, dead Eddie is trying to find out, Was he successful in saving the little girl. Let’s face it, whichever way that goes, it’s going to make you cry. I was reading the last chapter in the library and it was making me fill up. But that’s as much a reflex as the gagging when you put your fingers down your throat. Poke yourself in the eyes often enough and you will cry. In fact it’s like Albom is there jabbing a pointy stick into your eyes. Cry damn you, cry!
It’s also full of ‘wisdom’ such as ‘a stranger is just family you haven’t met yet’. Actually that might be true. That guy who sat next to me in the almost empty cinema and kept trying to touch my knee reminded me a lot of Uncle Philip who we don’t talk about any more.
Mitch Albom really really wants his book to teach people stuff. Important stuff. Spiritual stuff! And it works too, so long as you don’t mind being operated by him like a Sooty puppet."
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May 2021
1:39pm, 11 May 2021
46,956 posts
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LindsD
Hm. Interesting. I don't remember feeling preached at and I have a fairly low tolerance for stuff like that. I just remember feeling quite soothed. Definitely not going to re-read, though
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