Our local library had a copy of Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven (well, two actually), but the wait list was so long I had my sister-in-law pick me up a copy (they had 20) to read over Christmas. It’s not a hard book to finish. And not especially worth the easy read, either. It’s a book that, well, aspires to be profound. And falls short at least in my opinion. The basic premise is that a man dies and meets five people that help explain his life and his life’s purpose to him in order to give it meaning. Perhaps I thought it trite because of my belief on life and the after-life; perhaps it’s because while Mitch Albom is a good newspaper columnist he’s really not all that great as a novelist. I feel like I’m supposed to find inspiration in this story, that I’m supposed to look at my life differently, but it didn’t happen.