“Death ends a life, not a relationship.”
Mitch Albom’s classic memoir Tuesdays With Morrie has become one of the most beloved and bestselling memoirs of all time. Divided into fourteen different days, the book chronicles the visits the sports journalist made to his former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz, who was dying from ALS. Whilst also a commentary on the relationships and mentors that guide us through life, Tuesdays With Morrie is also one of the most affirming and poignant portraits of the power of love. Morrie divulges that love is at the core of every person and, to live without it, is to live with nothing. If Mitch Albom’s touching work and Morrie’s heartfelt lessons struck a chord with you, join us at What We Reading as we run you through some of our favourite life-affirming books like Tuesdays With Morrie!
When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalanithi
First up on our list of books like Tuesdays With Morrie is Paul Kalanithi’s beautiful memoir, When Breath Becomes Air. At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing his training as a neurosurgeon, Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. In an instant, he was turned from a doctor saving lives to one struggling to live, the future life he and his wife had always imagined suddenly evaporating.
When Breath Becomes Air is a poignant and ultimately powerful reconciliation with life, death, a doctor and his patients. Kalanthi chronicles his transformation from a naive medical student obsessed with understanding what makes a meaningful life, to a neurosurgeon at Stanford, and finally a patient himself and a new father confronting his own mortality. Filled with the same hopeful and life-affirming messages as Albom’s work, When Breath Becomes Air is a story of a brilliant doctor and unforgettable writer.
Check Out The Best Books Like When Breath Becomes Air
The Last Lecture – Randy Pausch
When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give his ‘Last Lecture’ – a contemplation on their demise and what matters most to them – he didn’t struggle to picture it being his literal last since he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But, similar to Tuesdays With Morrie, the lecture he gave wasn’t about dying.
The Last Lecture is a reflection on the importance of overcoming obstacles, enabling the dreams of others and seizing every moment life presents. Most of all, it was about living. Blending humour, intelligence and inspiration, Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture become a global phenomenon and will continue to be shared for generations to come.
The Choice: Embrace The Possible – Edith Eger
It’s 1944, and sixteen-year-old ballerina and gymnast Edith Eger is sent to Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Separated from her parents upon arrival, she endures harrowing and unimaginable experiences, including being forced to dance for the infamous Josef Mengele. When the camp is finally liberated, she is pulled from a pile of bodies, barely alive.
Yet these wartime horrors were unable to break Edith or her spirit. In fact, they provided her the ability to live again with an affirming energy and remarkable resilience. Her memoir, The Choice, chronicles her life journey, explores the ways in which our minds can keep us imprisoned and, similar to Tuesdays With Morrie, features moving stories of those she has helped to heal.
The Glass Castle – Jeannette Walls
Jeanette Walls’ #1 New York Times bestselling memoir The Glass Castle is an incredible story of resilience, redemption and a revelatory look at a dysfunctional and vibrant family, perfect for any readers who loved Tuesdays With Morrie. When he was sober, Jeannette’s father was brilliant and charismatic captured his children’s imaginations and taught them physics. But, when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was free-spirited and loathed the responsibility of raising a family.
She and her siblings learned to take care of themselves, and each other. They fed, clothed and protected one another and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children flourished. The Glass Castle remains an astonishing and deeply personal biography of the intense love shared by a peculiar but loyal family.
When All Is Said – Anne Griffin
Nominated for Best Debut Novel and Best Fiction in the 2019 Goodreads Choice Awards, When All Is Said is a fictional story like Tuesdays With Morrie about the connections and individuals that define our lives. If you had to pick five people to sum up your life, who would you choose? What would you say? And what would you learn about yourself when all is said and done?
Anne Griffin’s When All Is Said centres on Maurice Hannigan. Over the course of a Saturday night in June, he orders five different drinks at the Rainford House Hotel. With each, he toasts the most significant people in his life. Through these people, the ones who all left him behind, he reveals the story of his own life, including all the regrets and feuds and loves and triumphs.
Eat, Pray, Love – Elizabeth Gilbert
Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated all-American woman was supposed to want. But, instead of feeling fulfilled, she was consumed by panic, grief and confusion. To bounce back from this, she got rid of everything she owned and spent a year trekking across the globe.
Eat, Pray, Love is Gilbert’s chronicle of this year’s travelling and, specifically, three locations where the aspects of her own nature merge with what those places have done traditionally well. In Rome she studies the art of pleasure, in India, she learns about devotion and in Bali she she documents the art of balance. Intensely articulate and this is one of the most moving memoirs like Tuesdays With Morrie for any readers looking for another journey of self-discovery.
Before I Die – Jenny Downham
Although a work of realistic fiction, Jenny Downham’s Before I Die undoubtedly remains one of the best YA books similar to Tuesdays With Morrie which is both heartbreaking and yet incredibly life-affirming.
Tessa has just months left to live. Fighting back against hospital visits, endless tests, drugs and potent side effects, she puts together a list: her ‘To Do Before I Die’ list. And at the very top of this list is sex. Now free from the constraints of normal life, Tessa tastes new experiences that make her feel alive as he failing body struggles to keep up. Her relationships with lovers, friends and family are all crystallised in the precious weeks before her time finally runs out.
The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
Rounding off our list of books if you loved Tuesdays With Morrie is another one of Mitch Albom’s most celebrated works, The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a sleepy seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, he is killed in a tragic accident attempting to save a little girl.
He wakes up in the afterlife where he learns that heaven is not, in fact, a destination. It’s a place where your life is explained to you by five individuals. Some of them you know, others you do not. One by one, growing from a child, soldier to old man, Eddie’s five people come forward to revisit their connections to him on Earth. They illuminate the mysteries of his supposedly ‘meaningless’ life, and reveal the true secret behind the age-old question: ‘Why was I here?’
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
