Books

What is love? Great minds have been grappling with this question throughout the ages, and in the modern era, they have come up with many different answers. According to Western philosopher Pat Benetar, love is a battlefield. Her paisan Frank Sinatra would add the corollary that love is a tender trap. Love hurts. Love stinks. Love bites, love bleeds, love is the drug. The troubadours of our times agree: They want to know what love is, and they want you to show them. But the answer is simple: Love is a mix tape.

In the 1990s, when "alternative" was suddenly mainstream, bands like Pearl Jam and Pavement, Nirvana and R.E.M. -- bands that a year before would have been too weird for MTV -- were MTV. It was the decade of Kurt Cobain and Shania Twain and Taylor Dayne, a time that ended all too soon. The boundaries of American culture were exploding, and music was leading the way.

It was also when a shy music geek named Rob Sheffield met a hell-raising Appalachian punk-rock girl named Renee, who was way too cool for him but fell in love with him anyway. He was tall. She was short. He was shy. She was a social butterfly. She was the only one who laughed at his jokes when they were so bad, and they were always bad. They had nothing in common except that they both loved music. Music brought them together and kept them together. And it was music that would help Rob through a sudden, unfathomable loss.

In Love Is a Mix Tape, Rob, now a writer for Rolling Stone, uses the songs on fifteen mix tapes to tell the story of his brief time with Renee. From Elvis to Missy Elliott, the Rolling Stones to Yo La Tengo, the songs on these tapes make up the soundtrack to their lives.

Rob Sheffield isn't a musician, he's a writer, and Love Is a Mix Tape isn't a love song -- but it might as well be. This is Rob's tribute to music, to the decade that shaped him, but most of all to one unforgettable woman.

The story is of the power of music and one tragic loss. The author lost his wife unexpectedly and pieced together a book about their relationship in its before, during and after stages. Each chapter is headed by the tracklisting of a mixtape -- a customized amalgamation of songs, however random -- they had made. I was somewhat under the impression that the chapters would be more about the mixtapes they made together and less mile markers in the chronological tour of their relationship. The songs set the tone (somewhat) for the chapter to come, but there isn't necessarily any cohesion between the song choices themselves and the following few pages.

I understand how difficult it would be to pull that off, but I guess I had pretty high hopes.

Some parts of the book were beautiful in their tribute, but other parts just seemed like simple narrative. There were times when the anecdotes made Sheffield sound like he lived to a ripe old age and here he was remembering his early love. While I am sure we can get into how philosophically much more time passed in his life than ours after she died, he is still a young man. The book may have been cut down by a few pages, in fact all I really needed was some of the set up and the last chapter. In the last chapter it seemed like Sheffield finally let himself feel Renee's absence. Sharing in that, I finally began to feel for him.

For the most part, the book was enjoyable. I would argue that the inclusion of music into the story was a little over done (with countless references, name drops and lyrics spread throughout the book), but apparently that was how Rob and Renee lived. Those were the conversations they had.

The feeling I had the most while I read was that his story was a private one. I felt that he needed to write the book for his closure, to preserve her memory and to give himself perspective. While I am honored that he shared Renee with us all, I couldn't help but feel that I was intruding on something that was special to the two of them.

As previously mentioned, the final chapter could live and breathe on its own. The emotion that finally pulsed through those last few pages just about made up for its conspicuous absence earlier in the book. I never read achnowledgements, especailly when they are more than a paragraph but I read these. The last chapter spilled over into them and I couldn't help myself. I wanted to see the final goodbye and thank you written to Renee. After thanking everyone who helped write the book, I wanted to have my heart ripped out by a simple homage to Renee who will now live on forever in text. But while she was mentioned in the acknowledgements, she was never thanked. But then again, maybe that part was just too personal.

Its story, while sometimes buried under excessive music references, was sweet. The book was short; at 219 pages it is short enough to try it even if you aren't sure about it. All in all, Love is A Mix-Tape was a decent book.

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Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield

What is love? Great minds have been grappling with this question throughout the ages, and in the modern era, they have come up with many different answers. According to Western philosopher Pat Benetar, love is a battlefield. Her paisan Frank Sinatra would add the corollary that love is a tender trap. Love hurts. Love stinks. Love bites, love bleeds, love is the drug. The troubadours of our times agree: They want to know what love is, and they want you to show them. But the answer is simple: Love is a mix tape.

In the 1990s, when "alternative" was suddenly mainstream, bands like Pearl Jam and Pavement, Nirvana and R.E.M. -- bands that a year before would have been too weird for MTV -- were MTV. It was the decade of Kurt Cobain and Shania Twain and Taylor Dayne, a time that ended all too soon. The boundaries of American culture were exploding, and music was leading the way.

It was also when a shy music geek named Rob Sheffield met a hell-raising Appalachian punk-rock girl named Renee, who was way too cool for him but fell in love with him anyway. He was tall. She was short. He was shy. She was a social butterfly. She was the only one who laughed at his jokes when they were so bad, and they were always bad. They had nothing in common except that they both loved music. Music brought them together and kept them together. And it was music that would help Rob through a sudden, unfathomable loss.

In Love Is a Mix Tape, Rob, now a writer for Rolling Stone, uses the songs on fifteen mix tapes to tell the story of his brief time with Renee. From Elvis to Missy Elliott, the Rolling Stones to Yo La Tengo, the songs on these tapes make up the soundtrack to their lives.

Rob Sheffield isn't a musician, he's a writer, and Love Is a Mix Tape isn't a love song -- but it might as well be. This is Rob's tribute to music, to the decade that shaped him, but most of all to one unforgettable woman.

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The Man Booker Prize for Fiction represents the very best in contemporary fiction (from the UK, Ireland, and the Commonwealth). One of the world’s most prestigious awards, and one of incomparable influence, it continues to be the pinnacle of ambition for every fiction writer. It has the power to transform the fortunes of authors, and even publishers. In 2004, not only did Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty reach the bestseller lists, but previous winners The Life of Pi (2002) and Vernon God Little (2003) were also amongst the bestselling books of the year. Congratulations to last year's winner Kiran Desai for her novel The Inheritance of Loss.

	Darkmans by Nicola Barker
	Self Help by Edward Docx
	The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng
	The Gathering by Anne Enright
	The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
	The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies
	Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
	Gifted by Nikita Lalwani
	On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
	What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn
	Consolation by Michael Redhill
	Animal's People by Indra Sinha
	Winnie and Wolf by A. N. Wilson

Mitch Albom has mesmerized readers around the world with his number one New York Times bestsellers, The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Tuesdays with Morrie. Now he returns with a beautiful, haunting novel abuot the family we love and the chances we miss.

For One More Day is the story of a mother and a son, and a relationship that lasts a lifetime and beyond. It explores the question: What would you do if you could spend one more day with a lost loved one?

As a child, Charley Benetto is told by his father, "You can be a mama's boy or you can be a daddy's boy, but you can't be both." So he chooses his father, and he worships him -- right up to the day the man disappears. An eleven-year-old Charley must then turn to his mother, who bravely raises him on her own, despite Charley's embarrassment and yearnings for a complete family.

Decades later, Charley is a broken man. His life has been crumbled by alcohol and regret. He loses his job. He leaves his family. He hits bottom after discovering his only daughter has shut him out of her wedding.

And he decides to take his own life.

He makes a midnight ride to his small hometown, with plans to do himself in. But upon failing even to do that, he staggers back to his old house, only to make an astonishing discovery. His mother -- who died eight years earlier -- is still living there, and welcomes him home as if nothing had ever happened.

I read Mitch Albom's column frequently and I have read both Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet In Heaven. I don't like his writing as much as I (generally) like his ideas. I was as excited about the "For One More Day" idea as I have been for anything he has written in a long time. I even made sure to attend the charity event held to promote the book.

I try to think that my expectations didn't get the better of me, but it would appear that they did. I didn't like For One More Day for two main reasons: it was too similar to The Five People You Meet In Heaven and the main character was not one I could support.

While I understand that the plot lines were entirely different in The Five People You Meet In Heaven and For One More Day, one thing seemed too similar. Both books featured visits from and conversations with people who had died. Those people came to the story and told about things that happened during their time alive which affected our protagonists indirectly. The anecdotes were meant to help the characters see the big picture about life and how the things we do affect other people and the things people who love us do to protect us without us ever knowing. They are both good lessons, but all I am saying is that I want to see the Vegas odds that Mitch Albom's next book will focus on interaction with a person or people beyond the grave.

This book chronicled what leads to a new lease on life for a man who was down and out. He was past the point-of-no-return, or so he thought. Here was a man whose life had snowballed downhill years before and his daily dose of alcohol to bandage his problems had lost its effect. One main theme of the book is that no matter how old we get or how many things in life we achieve, there is still nothing that can substitute for Mom. I love that message.

I also like the other message from the book: that everyone deserves a second chance, but that is where this book lost me. Charley's life did not turn out the way he had planned, but the only reason he was able to become anything at all was because of his mother. The problem was that when he wasn't directly treating his mother poorly it was because he was too busy ignoring her. Charley was saved from himself by One More Day with his (deceased) mother. She told and showed him how she cared for him, the things she did for him that went unnoticed. The stories of sacrifice give Charley a desire to make right the times he had been wrong.

This was not the Mother-Son story I had expected. I had expected a story-book answer to the question, "If you could spend one day with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be?" That question would have been posed to a man whose mother was taken from him, and he could choose to spend the day with anyone. And he would choose his mom. For One More Day answers, instead, the question, "What can save a man who is, by his own account, beyond being saved?" And I did not feel that Charley deserved a visit from his mother. While it shows that a mother's love is eternal and I did not want to see Charley successfully take his own life, I thought it was too easy. Like everyone, I felt that Charley does deserve a second chance (even though he had technically had many already), but I felt like he should have had to work harder to get it.

The problem I have with Mitch Albom's writing is that usually he is too narrative, too detached. I felt the same way here. This story deserved more emotion. It needed more passion. Stories since the beginning of time marvel at the power of a mother's love, but reading For One More Day I only felt a mother's pain because her child would not love her back. You may be able to support that child, but I could not.

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