[Book Review] The Five People You Meet in Heaven

 

The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Mitch Albom. Time Warner Paperbacks (2005). 229 pages.

An old man, Eddie, who is working at the amusement park called Ruby Pier, dies in a tragic accident after trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. The story actually begins after the death of the old man on his eighty-third birthday. In afterlife, Eddie goes to heaven, but it neither the place of peace nor the place full of happiness. Instead, it is the place where he meets five people who connected to him when he was alive, who were also the reason why he lived 'til the old age. He's never expected that he would experience something like that in heaven. Anyway, each meeting with those people helps him understand his past and gives him a lesson about life.   

This book taught me about life and death, and how one's actions affect others. I really enjoyed when I was reading. It's like I was learning the lessons with Eddie. Mitch Albom's style of writing attracted me. After finished reading the story, what I had in mind was that I would definitely buy more books of this author.

My Favorite quotes from The Five People You Meet in Heaven:

“All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.”

“Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.”

“Each affects the other, and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.”

“Fairness," he said, 'does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young.”

“Holding anger is a poison...It eats you from inside...We think that by hating someone we hurt them...But hatred is a curved blade...and the harm we do to others...we also do to ourselves.”

“Love like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive.”

“In order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did and why you no longer need to feel it.”

[Book Review] Turtles All the Way Down

Turtles All The Way Down. John Green. 2017. 286 pages.

The story is about a sixteen-year-old girl, Aza Holmes, who has been suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and anxiety. It starts with a fugitive billionaire, Russell Pickett, who is the father of Aza's old friends, Davis Pickett, went missing. Due to the reward of $100,000 for information leading to Pickett's arrest, her friend, Daisy, takes Aza on the search for the missing billionaire. 

In the beginning, it seems like the story would go around the mystery of the missing billionaire. However, it actually focuses on Aza and her relationship with others, whereas the mystery part is taken so lightly. 

I felt a little bit disappointed when finding out that the main plot wasn't about the search for Russell Pickett, but I will admit that each character of this story was well-written, especially Aza Holmes. I liked the way John Green showed Aza's mental illness; it made me easily understand her. Other interesting characters were Davis Pickett and his younger bother as the missing of their father directly affected their feeling.

Speaking of the relationship in this story, the romantic relationship between Aza and Davis was nice, and I even loved the friendship between Aza and her best friend, Daisy. Their friendship is complicated as Daisy isn't fully understand Aza's suffering, while Aza doesn't quite understand Daisy's tough times without much money either. In spite of this, both of them still love and support each other.

My favorite quotes from Turtles All The Way Down:

“Life is a series of choices between wonders.”

“The problem with happy endings is that they're either not really happy, or not really endings, you know? In real life, some things get better and some things get worse. And then eventually you die.”

“The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening, infinitely.”

“What I love about science is that as you learn, you don't really get answers. You just get better questions.”

“It's turtles all the way fucking down, Holmesy. You're trying to find the turtle at the bottom of the pile, but that's not how it works.”