Flippy - I Rant, You Read
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Replay - One of The Two Coolest Books I’ve Read
I recently sent a book to a friend. I wanted to send something entertaining, and I wasn’t looking for anything particularly deep. This book is one of my two favorite books of all time. My brother and I have both read it numerous times. It vaguely resembles “Groundhog Day”, but it’s about a man who dies of a heart attack at the age of 43, and is reborn at 18, knowing what he knew at 43. He gets to relive his life until he reaches 43...each time. The first time I read it, I fantasized about making lots of money in the stock market with the current knowledge I have. Now that I’m older, I just think about do-overs. There are a few things I’d like to fix, like college. I’d like to actually try and get a degree. I’m not dumb, I could’ve actually made something of my professional life. Well, okay, I’m redoing that now, but it sure would’ve been easier had I done it when I was in my twenties. Alas, the things you know when you’re in your forties are so not the things you know when you’re in your twenties. In my early twenties, I knew all the lyrics to Olivia Newton-John songs, how to write terrible poetry, how great Iovino’s bbq chicken was, and I really really liked Tom Cruise. I also had really poor taste in most of the people I chose to date. That probably relates somehow to liking Tom Cruise.
I didn’t mean to send any sort of deep message to this friend, but I suppose in afterthought, maybe there is a message. Luckily, sometimes do-overs are still allowed in life. For instance, me getting an actual career at 42. It’s not the career I would’ve chosen at 18 or 25, but it does have some significance now. Anyway, whether or not the book has any sort of meaning (and I didn’t plan it that way), it’s just a good entertaining book. So, read it. And if you’ve already read it, let me know, so together we can wait years and years and years for them to finally make the movie. By the way, ironically, the author died in 2003, of a heart attack. At least he made it to 59 this time. But, maybe he’s coming back as an 18 year old. That would be super cool for him.
See, I even liked it in last year’s book meme. But now, I have the fifth meaningful book to add to that meme - Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger. So now you have my two favorite books of all time in one, one blog entry.
The book description from Amazon, if my vague insistence that you buy it isn’t doing it for you: Jeff Winston, forty-three, didn’t know he was a replayer until he died and woke up twenty-five years younger in his college dorm room; he lived another life. And died again. And lived again and died again—in a continuous twenty-five-year cycle—each time starting from scratch at the age of eighteen to reclaim lost loves, remedy past mistakes, or make a fortune in the stock market. A novel of gripping adventure, romance, and fascinating speculation on the nature of time, Replay asks the question: “What if you could live your life over again?”
Next entry: Okay, I Want A Do-Over Previous entry: The Blur Of The Last Two Months
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Thanks to you, I’ll be heading to the library tomorrow to get this book. It sounds like something I’d love!
I’d love to do many things over. So many things that I wouldn’t say, many things I would say! I would absolutely do over the last time I saw my dad alive.
Fortunately, I have enough sense to do mini do-overs every day with my child. Every single day I hug her at least once (even if that embarrasses her in front of her friends) and tell her I love her without fail.
One of the things I love about your blog is that you make me think. Thinking is good.
on 10/13 at 06:22 AM -
I’m not even sure what I’d do over in my life. Sometimes it seems like I made some bad decisions, but now that I know those decisions were bad, I learned from them. If I didn’t make the bad choices once, would I have just made them later in life?
You’ll like the book. I promise.
on 10/13 at 06:28 PM
