Tuesdays With Morrie
Book review of Mitch Albom’s Memoir Novel
A quick read but so inspirational and moving.
It will make you pause and reflect on your own life with its lessons towards family, love, jealousy, self-pity and death.
It’s in a memoir category, but actually it's so much more than that.
The Plot
Morrie Schwartz, a sociology professor at Brandeis University has been diagnosed with ALS. The author Mitch Albom an old student of Morrie’s learns of his form professor’s diagnosis and goes to visit his one-time mentor.
This first visit turns into regular visits on Tuesdays in what ultimately becomes the professor’s final class, the meaning of life.
What I liked
Everything.
It has become one of my top ten reads. 192 pages you can fly through in a day especially because of the interview style of writing which will keep you hooked along with the powerful words of a dying man.
Some of my favourite quotes I’ve folded down the pages in the book are:
“The truth is Mitch,” he said, “once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”
Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another.
“Mitch, I don’t allow myself any more self-pity than that. A little each morning, a few tears and that’s all.” I thought about all the people I knew who spent many of their waking hours feeling sorry for themselves. How useful it would be to put a daily limit on self-pity. Just a few tearful minutes, then on with the day.
“I envy them being able to go to the health club, or go for a swim. Or dance. Mostly for dancing. But envy comes to me, I feel it, and then I let it go. Remember what I said about detachment? Let it go. Tell yourself, ‘That’s envy, I’m going to separate from it now.’ And walk away.”
“As you grow, you learn more. Aging is not just decay…it’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand that you’re going to die and that you live a better life because of it.”
There isn’t one single thing I didn’t like about this book.
I urge everyone to read it or listen to it on audible, which strikes me, with some of the quotes, that will be one heck of a uplifting listen.
