Honest death.

Christopher Hitches was an equally popular/unpopular British columnist for Vanity Fair who was well known and well respected for his literary skill and honest reporting. He was a polarizing figure for his out spoken views on religion (he was an atheist) and politics. He was a regular guest and friend of Bill Maher, appeared on many different types of talk shows, and was a contributing columnist/editor for multiple highly circulated publications. In late 2010 he was diagnosed with cancer. December of 2011 he passed away.

Mortality is Hitchens' reflections on life, death, and anything in between. This book is very short and a very quick read but it is brutally honest and a true look at what it means for an individual to die.You close this one and just sit and think on a lot of aspects within your own life that you've avoided giving the proper attention and effort to.

I enjoyed this book because I often contemplate life and purpose, not necessarily in a morbid way but yes, death is a fascinating life event, or rather end of life event. I live everyday thinking how I can make the time I have matter and what it all really adds up to in the end. Sometimes I get nowhere with these trains of thought, sometimes I feel like I am close to grasping "it". Hitchens doesn't pull any punches, he is after all the one dying, he can say whatever he wants. The most haunting piece of this book is that at the end it just cuts off...Chris never got to finish his book about death before his own occured. His widow included an epilogue of the pieces and notes that he left behind that he intended to make a part of the book. Somehow even reading it two years after his death, when I got to the point in it where it cuts off it was like in that instant he passed.

There is something tragic about a life unfinished. In a way everyone's ends that way but to see it in print is a bit unnerving. If you want one to make you think deeply, lose yourself in Christopher Hitchens last words while letting them influence your next move.