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Journal Entry 1 by synergy from San Antonio, Texas USA on Friday, January 28, 2005
I saw this book up for a new owner at the livejournal.com bookcrossing community and I'd heard the title mentioned often lately, so I snapped it up. I got this from BXer rabidpixie and since she'd not registered it, I'm registering it for her. :)
Onto Mt. TBR it goes.
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Journal Entry 2 by synergy from San Antonio, Texas USA on Sunday, September 17, 2006
2006 Book #37 - The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom
I got this book from another bookcrosser who put it up for adoption on the bookcrosser's community on Livejournal. I blew through this little book. I think I read it in about 4 hours. Again, this is one of the books I had to pick up right now because I have the movie version coming in the mail, probably sometime this week. :) Since it was such an easy book this time I actually got to finish it before seeing the movie. By the way, the author of this book is also the one who wrote Tuesdays with Morrie which was also adapted into a movie.
So the book itself is what I would call quaint. I rarely use that word, so I'm not using it in the way often tend to do these days, sort of condescendingly. It really is a little book to give you some thought and maybe be a little Chicken-for-the-soulish. Rather than be the typical death and going straight to heaven, Albom creates a different version of heaven which to me isn't so bad. Here's the summary from inside the bookjacket: Eddie is a grizzled war veteran who feels trapped in a meaningless life of fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. As the park has changed over the years - from the Loop-the-Loop to the Pipeline Plunge - so, too, has Eddie changed, from an optimistic youth to an embittered old age. His days are a dull routine of work, loneliness, and regret.
Then, on his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic accident, trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. With his final breath, he feels two small hands in his - and then nothing. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden, but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it. These people may have been loved ones or distant strangers. Yet each of them changed your path forever.
One by one, Eddie's five people illuminate the unseen connections of his earthly life. As the story builds to its stunning conclusion, Eddie desperately seeks redemption in the still-unknown last act of his life: Was it a heroic success of a devastating failure? The answer, which comes from the most unlikely of sources, is an inspirational as a glimpse of heaven itself.
The story is a sweet one and I thought that the concept of the five people was put to good use. It reminded me of the old gameshow where you had to guess who was behind that door by their voices and things they said to you. Wanting to find out what happened to the little girl did keep me going. I wanted to know whether he saved her or not! I do like how Albom brings back the story to the beginning by revealing what did happen to the little girl. There's also a little bit of a surprising line in the last few paragraphs tying the cause of the accident that kills Eddie to his five people. Nice! I didn't see that coming at all and I have to say that's the best thing I appreciate the most in a book. :) Probably a lot of those soft Christians that I'm picturing reading this book wouldn't see it this way, but I thought that the story was actually very Buddhist in what it closes out with or even any of a number of other non-Christian religions e.g. Hinduism or various pagan or also native's religions. A pretty sentiment. I would like to see how the story is treated in the movie.
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The Five People You Meet in Heaven
