Tuesdays with Morrie

From the book blurb

Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, and gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly 20 years ago. Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you? Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying of ALS - or motor neurone disease - Morrie visited Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final class: lessons in how to live. This is a chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie's lasting gift with the world.

Author

Mitchell David Albom is an author, journalist, screenwriter, playwright, radio and television broadcaster and musician. His books have collectively sold over 35 million copies worldwide; have been published in forty-one territories and in forty-two languages around the world; and have been made into Emmy Award-winning and critically-acclaimed television movies.

Characters

Morrie Schwartz is optimistic. He celebrates life and embraces it the way it is sans complains.

Mitch Albom is confused and unhappy. He derives comfort by satisfying his materialistic urges.

What I think

Some books hit us like a gush of fresh air and fills our hearts with an eccentric delight. These books affects us at a spiritual and philosophical level. They influence us so much that they make us think and lead us towards betterment.

Tuesdays with Morrie is one such books…. And one of the interesting fact is the Morrie means “My Teacher” in Hebrew!

Morrie, Mitch’s professor is counting down his days to be kissed by death. Yet, he is happy and positive. He indulges himself in simple pleasures of life – loving and being loved!

Tuesdays with Morrie is all about the conversations between Mitch and Morrie during the last few Tuesdays before Morrie’s death. It is also about how those interactions transform Mitch.

The narrative flows with ease and some of the important lessons are repeated more than once – Like how a teacher repeats an important concept again and again so that it is etched in student’s mind.

The book moves you to tears. It urges you to look at life in a different angle. It forces you not to take people for granted and cautions you that people matter; not money.

I hope that all of us would be familiar with this famous quote by Bacon: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” Tuesdays with Morrie is a book that should be chewed and digested!

Should you read it?

This book is a treasure… Something which can be read again and again…

GO FOR IT!

Rating

4.5/5

Thank you

Dear cousin, for enlisting this book as one of the books that influenced you and making me go in search of it.

Some words that stole my heart

©       “We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don't satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted.”

©       “Accept the past as past, without denying it or discarding it.” 

©       “ . . . if you really want it, then you’ll make your dream happen.”

©       "If you accept you are going to die at any time, then you might not be as ambitious as you are."

©       “Don’t let go too soon, but don’t hang on too long.”

PS: I started reading this book on Teacher’s day (September 5^th)… Amazed by the coincidence. And I am glad that I am blessed with several good teachers who have patiently molded me to what I am. And, this book, particularly, made me miss Vijay sir. You are the best!!!