Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

This book is the incredible story of the relationship between Mitch Albom and Morrie Schwartz and the inspiration Morrie gave to his students. Morrie was diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis...a.k.a. Lou Gehrig's disease), but he never let dying hinder him from continuing his life. Over time, he lost strength in his body to dance, drive, walk, and even moving was very difficult.

Tuesdays with Morrie is actually my second book by Mitch Albom. I read The Five People You Meet in Heaven and it was probably the most unique book that I have read.

I was really engaged in the book when I saw Morrie's optimistic character and his insights on life even though he is getting crippled by the seconds. I haven't gotten too far into the book but I can see that a lot of the discussions will have to do with the meaning of life, handling things that life throws at you, and how to prepare yourself for death.

After finding out about his incurable illness, Morrie is faced with the question, "Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left?...He would not wither. He would not be ashamed of dying." First of all, Morrie is very grounded even though he KNOWS that for every day that passes, he gets closer and closer to dying. But he handles it almost effortlessly and without fear.

10/20/09- Although I completely admire and respect how Morrie handles knowing he's going to die, I feel like this book is a little repetitive. I kind of feel that finding the meaning of life and fearing death are being said over and over again in different words. I feel like there's an excessive amount of pages before Morrie dies, not that I'm happy about that, and I think the book moves at a relatively slow pace.

One thing that I picked up as I was reading this book was that every time Mitch Albom has a dialogue quote, his words are not in quotation marks. I wonder why he does this.