The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead
by David Shields
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Read in February, 2008
recommends it for:
people who will someday be dead
absolutely beautiful and amazing. i love this book so much i can't describe it. i'm going to make a point to read it once a year for as long as i live.
the book has so many interesting facts and quotes that i ended up dogearing almost the entire book, so i'll just include the prologue:
"this book is an autobiography of my body, a biography of my father's body, an anatomy of our bodies together- especially my dad's, his body, his relentless body.
this is my research; this is what i ...more
the book has so many interesting facts and quotes that i ended up dogearing almost the entire book, so i'll just include the prologue:
"this book is an autobiography of my body, a biography of my father's body, an anatomy of our bodies together- especially my dad's, his body, his relentless body.
this is my research; this is what i ...more
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Read in March, 2008
The Thing About Life is That One Day You’ll Be Dead is a difficult-to-define, genre-crossing brooding and searching book that combines biography and biology in an obsessive musing on Death. David Shields’ father is 97. David Shields is obsessed with his father’s vitality and seemingly miraculous health and amazingly long life. So instead of simply being grateful, he wrote a book about his obsession with death and all the related gritty details therein.
Shields hasn’t so much written a b...more
Shields hasn’t so much written a b...more
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If, like this reader, you are somewhat obsessed with the topic of death, and that seemingly impending event at times puts a damper on your here and now, then you’ll likely be engaged while reading this memoir, too.
The book is very much homage to the author’s once spirited, indefatigable, and often annoying father, who is finally (at the age of 97) showing signs of mortality. In it Shields discusses different aspects of life, touching on birth, childhood, food, sex, etc.; and of course, d...more
The book is very much homage to the author’s once spirited, indefatigable, and often annoying father, who is finally (at the age of 97) showing signs of mortality. In it Shields discusses different aspects of life, touching on birth, childhood, food, sex, etc.; and of course, d...more
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Read in February, 2008
recommends it for:
your father
The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead by David Shields is a brilliant book of nonfiction prose. Go no further. Add to cart. Check out. Not convinced? Ok, how about this? David Shields meditates on the body’s ungraceful trek to death by considering his young daughter’s athleticism, his own waning physicality at middle age, and his father’s insatiable virility. Did I mention his father is 97? As in his other books of nonfiction (e.g., Remote & Enough About You: Adventures...more
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Read in March, 2008
Facts, Philosophies, Fun, and Fascination
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 essa...more
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 essa...more
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Read in April, 2008
recommends it for:
Sports loving agnostic Jewish men? And the rest of us, too.
Well, I'm definitely filing this away as one of the more "interesting" memoirs I've read in a while. It's a little depressing, mostly because the author takes such a depressing tone when he's talking about aging. Partly because his own dad is such a pleasure-seeking playboy, David Shields does not seem to attribute much in the way of wisdom to the very old. I think I disagree with the author about the nature of life and aging, and I'm glad I do.
In many ways, this sports-obsessed an...more
In many ways, this sports-obsessed an...more
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Read in April, 2008
I had first heard David Shields on This American Life. At first I thought it was another frequent contributor and then I realized I hadn't heard of this David. Then I forgot about Mr. Shields until I found myself at my campus library. His book was short and sky blue and I found myself instantly drawn to it, much like Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You. Unlike Ms. July, Mr. Shields writes nonfiction, the story of him and his 97-year-old father and their disparate beliefs on death...more
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Read in June, 2008
The Thing about Reading this Book is that . . . Someday You’ll be Finished
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...more
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...more
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Read in June, 2008
I honestly can't decide how I felt about this book. It wasn't at all what I was expecting, based on a short excerpt that I had read, but of course that's not necessarily a bad thing. What it is is various bits of information about what happens to the human body as it matures, ages, and dies, interspersed with personal, memoir-type accounts of the author and his father, some of which careens a bit too far into the self-obsessed and solipsistic for my tastes (did we really need to know the size ...more
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I have a feeling that this book will probably confirm most of my cynical urges about life... but I just can't resist. Besides, lots of books like this are also life affirming, much like the show Six Feet Under: once you deal with death as a hard fact, then you can start living and the time that you do have can be better spent. Well, that's the idea.
***
I enjoyed this book and read it pretty quickly. But I get the feeling that the author wrote it pretty quickly as well, when more could have ...more
***
I enjoyed this book and read it pretty quickly. But I get the feeling that the author wrote it pretty quickly as well, when more could have ...more
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Read in March, 2008
The most interesting parts of this book are where the author actually reveals facts about the physiology of aging, from birth through old age. Did you know that a newborn's brain is 25% the size of an adult brain, and that newborns can hear up to 40,000 cycles per minute, but an adult can hear only 20,000 cycles per minute? There are many interesting facts like this in the book, but at times it seemed like the author just wanted to publish a bunch of essays he's written over the years. In tha...more
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Read in April, 2008
I feel sorry for this book's fact checker: virtually every sentence in it was a simple statement of medical/biological/physiological/anatomical fact. Many of the non-fact sentences were quotes attributed to specific individuals...more fact checking! Many of them were interesting or eye-opening or surprising but repeatedly i found myself thinking, "This is a compendium of quotes and facts semi-well-arranged into chapters."
It didn't deliver on the blurb and marketing promises. I thou...more
It didn't deliver on the blurb and marketing promises. I thou...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in February, 2008
This book really gets to the point of what it means to be human. It talks about life and death and what those two things really mean. The author is witty and blunt all at the same time, as he describes his own life, leaving nothing out (to the point where at times he can be a little self-deprecating), and compares it to the life of his father, who is still going strong at 97 years of age. Moving, funny, and sad all at the same time. For those of us scared to face our own mortality, this is a ref...more
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Read in February, 2008
I read this book in one day, which was much too fast because there's so much in it. Don't let the title make you think it's a remotely depressing read. The author examines the cycle of life, specifically the process of aging from birth to death, with bits of memoir of his own life and his 97-year-old death-defying father's, literary quotes galore, and information about reproduction and aging among a wide variety of living things. The tone of the book is light, affectionate, funny at best and ...more
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Read in June, 2008
This book is filled with great facts and quotes. It gets kinda self-centered when it talks about author guy and his dad (I care because?) The reviews say that it will make you think about your mortality more. Nope. It switches from listing hard facts, to sharing autobiographical stories about the author and his lively old dad. I just don't get it. Was it an autobiography or a nonfiction factbook? I learned more by watching Inside the Human Body. The ending was not that great. I thought it was so...more
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Read in April, 2008
This was just OK. It was a memoir of sorts (a man's relationship with his father as he ages and dies), but the narrative was also interspersed with biological facts about the human body as we age.
I actually found all of the factoids about aging fascinating, which is a guess a good thing because that comprised about 70% of the book, but I had no interest what so ever in the narrator or his relationship to his father: that's not good.
Some interesting moments, but nothing I would recommend.
I actually found all of the factoids about aging fascinating, which is a guess a good thing because that comprised about 70% of the book, but I had no interest what so ever in the narrator or his relationship to his father: that's not good.
Some interesting moments, but nothing I would recommend.
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Read in February, 2008
There’s a reason Powell’s picked this book as one of their new favorites. The Thing About Life is a smart, witty, well written book. Shields does an excellent job of mixing details with emotions that kept me smiling throughout the book. His love for his daughter, wife, father, and life itself is infectious. He’s the kind of writer who puts the prose on the page in a way that makes you continue to think about it long after you put the book down.
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Read in May, 2008
okay, i put this book down on Monday night--it was becoming too realistic and depressing. moral of the novel: after 18 your body turns into shit, you are more stupid than ever before and there is no turning back.
good night.
so far i like all the factual science stats on evolution and infants. the stories about him and his dad are unusual and don't tie in yet but i'm on page 30...i'll give it more time. i like it thus far.
good night.
so far i like all the factual science stats on evolution and infants. the stories about him and his dad are unusual and don't tie in yet but i'm on page 30...i'll give it more time. i like it thus far.
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Read in March, 2008
This book has a really interesting format... a factual consideration of the stages of life and dying is liberally interspersed with memories from his life and his father's life and musings on their relationship. It's got some pretty funny bits and some touching moments. I don't know if I left with a new consideration for "the meaning of it all," but by the end I felt like I kind of knew the author and his dad, and I liked them.
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Read in February, 2008
recommends it for:
no one
I thought I would love this book based on the title and the idea behind the book, but I have to say, it is really lame.
I am a nurse by profession and a researcher at heart. The author often says "this many people will die of this at such and such age." He has no medical background and does not site any sources. I was neither impressed or intrigued.
For the first time in ages I didn't finish a book.
I am a nurse by profession and a researcher at heart. The author often says "this many people will die of this at such and such age." He has no medical background and does not site any sources. I was neither impressed or intrigued.
For the first time in ages I didn't finish a book.
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