Researching depression is, I’ve realized, pretty much an open invitation for life to rain down the irony. Today was not a good day, nor was it a particularly wonderful weekend. A lot of the blame has to be placed on three books I’ve read in the past 2 weeks: Spook, Into Thin Air, and The Year of Magical Thinking. When I was browsing through Borders a few weeks ago, cashing in on a gift card given to me for Christmas by Christina’s grandparents, I picked the three books that seemed most interesting at the time (didn’t hurt that two were on the buy one / get one 1/2 off table). As Christina said yesterday, maybe my unconscious mind was trying to tell me something; why else would I pick a trilogy of death?

All three books approach death differently; Spook, by Mary Roach, examines the scientific quest for life after death, Into Thin Air is Jon Krakauer account of a disastrous Everest summit that resulted in a dozen deaths, and The Year of Magical Thinking is Joan Didion’s memoir about the death of her husband. I read them in that order, which was a huge mistake. Spook is funny and light-hearted, and in the order of death-grief-afterlife, should have come last. Instead, I read it first. While fine (I’ve read Stiff and enjoyed it), when read out of context the book is somewhat anticlimactic. Not so for Into Thin Air, the most traumatic of the three, and by far the most visceral (Didion’s brooding paragraphs about dilated pupils cannot match the single sentence on the subject in Into Thin Air). The Didion, of course, was well-written (memory: Daily Themes at Yale pounding us with Didion this, Didion that, let’s all strive to write like Joan Didion), but, in the words of a market researcher in the book, is great for people with 16+ years of education. It lacked the universal struggle and appeal of Into Thin Air.

I should have read the Spook last and the other two in order, to properly get the death-grief-afterlife cycle. The Year Of Magical Thinking was hard to read, not because of its narrative complexity (it’s pretty straightforward) but because I cannot help but feel that Joan Didion lives a different life on a different planet than mere mortals like us. It’s not her prose per se but her lifestyle. Yes I realize this is comical given that Mount Everest is practically a different planet, yet I can see myself shelling out my life savings for such an expedition, while I cannot imagine myself eating out in Malibu every day or arguing about vacations to Paris. Perhaps Didion demands, as she states in her book, grief to be experienced first-hand. Until that moment, hopefully many decades from now, the book will sit on my shelf.

I read Into Thin Air in two days, the Didion in two as well, while Spook took a little more starting and stopping. I like to think of the three as Mind, Body, and Soul (Didion, Krakauer, and Roach), as they each take a certain perspective, such as the winding prose of Didion or the visceral struggle of Krakauer. Roach’s is the least defineable, but I went with the characters in the book who all, without fail, seek explanation for their own personal faith. I think it’s a fascinating question, given that I know several very intelligent, reasonable, and not particularly religious people talk about freaky paranormal experiences, including my mother. Reading Into Thin Air was painful; the deaths are not belabored or burdened with words. At the top of the world, people simply slip or fall or freeze, and then they are gone.