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  "title": "A Preparation for Death",
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  "slug": "a-preparation-for-death",
  "url": "https://www.bookquiver.com/greg-baxter/a-preparation-for-death",
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  "authors": [
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      "name": "Greg Baxter",
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  "first_published": "2010-07-01",
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  "description": "Traditional autobiography is composed after the experience has passed. I wrote this book in the very panic of the experiences that inspired it ... ' In his early thirties, Greg Baxter found himself in a strange place. He hated his job, he was drinking excessively, he was sabotaging his most important relationships, and he was no longer doing the thing he cared about most: writing. Strangest of all, at this time he started teaching evening classes in creative writing - and his life changed utterly. A Preparation for Death is a document of the chaos and discovery of that time and of the experiences that led Greg Baxter to that strange place - an extraordinarily intimate account of literary failure (and its consequences), personal decay, and redemption through reading, writing, and truth-telling. Studded with vivid, loving portraits of the people closest to him - his Austrian grandmother, who narrowly survived the Second World War; his mother and father, both described with heartbreakingly close attention; and his cousin Walter, whose own demons provide a striking counterpoint to the author's - it is above all a stunningly vivid and searching self-portrait: possibly the most honest book you'll ever read.",
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      "title": "A Preparation for Death",
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