BOOK RELEASE: Tuesdays with Morrie

I just read Tuesdays with Morrie. I read it because I handed a few Bookcrossing.com starter kits to my friend Steve, along with my first book launch, a collection of Edward Gorey drawings that I was ready to let go.

He promptly registered and handed back Tuesdays with Morrie.

It's a book about real people in which nothing remarkable happens except for ordinary lives and deaths, therefore completely like anything I read voluntarily. It's about living in the face of completely mundane death. It ripped my heart out.

I probably need to read it about every five years just to keep myself in touch with what it woke up inside. I can check out a library copy for that. Someone else needs to read it.

Tuesdays with Morrie is 200 pages and took me about three hours to read, going fairly slowly. It's easy language, because one of the things it's about is not hiding behind language. First comment to this post that asks for this book (please provide your mailing address either there or to gement(at)hotmail(dot)com) gets it mailed to them. You are volunteering to read it, note it on line, and pass it on again.

Update: badconducter's got the book and I've corrected the link above. The rest of you... go find a copy of it anyway, darn it.

Staying in touch

The most important thing I got out of Tuesdays with Morrie was the idea of staying in touch with people you care about, which I am phenomenally bad at. I mean, really bad at it.

I got a wedding invitation, months ago, from a friend getting married in Ireland, this weekend. I still haven't replied, despite her asking very clearly for a reply, despite the return address, despite the inclusion of an e-mail address (which I already had memorized). Despite the fact she asked me to sing at her wedding.

Obviously, I can't swing a trip to Ireland right now. It's just not in my priorities. But a reply? What's wrong with me?

I have a friend with cancer who would be delighted if I could just get off my duff far enough to call her once a week. Once a freakin' week. I've called her maybe three times in the last six months.

I'm even worse about people whose contact info I can't keep track of, which is most of them. I have an e-mail address from my college, which I was pleased to see would last forever, so I could keep all my archives, and I wouldn't lose contact with people who didn't have any other means of contacting me.

I haven't checked that account in a year. I still have it. It just feels like too much hassle to check it. Too much hassle to talk to the people I most care about. WTF?

People who stay in good touch with their loved ones, and especially those of you who have had to learn the skill... Help me. Please.