Eclectic Reading

Now I'm not looking for sympathy here but I've been stuck indoors both with the British Weather and the Flu recently. Now that the choruses of pity are over I will continue.  I know this would seem like a bad thing, but every cloud has a silver lining, and it has meant a lot more time to read and catch up with books I have been meaning to delve into for a long time.

Now most people reading this will have heard of CS Lewis, unless you have been living in a desert island somehwere. He wrote the Chronicles of Narnia and The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. For those of you who don't know, he was also wrote many classic Christian Books and I have been able to read one that has been on my to read list for far too long, and reread another. The first was The Great Divorce which is an allegorical look at heaven and hell. This really is an allegory and sees people who are in hell as being ghosts who are isolated from others and have little meaningful social contact. This is an isolation of their own making. To humans, who are essentially social beings, this would seem to be an apt allegory for hell. Those who are in heaven are of a more substantial form and are able to interact. They can also interact with those in hell and move them in to purgatory and they can then move into heaven if they repent and beleive in God. Whatever your feelings on this, this is a good book and well worth reading. The second one I read was The Screwtape Letters, a brilliant but tongue in cheek volume of letters from a senior to a junior devil. This essentally gives advice on how to trip up man and get him to turn from God.

Those of you who read my blog regularly or know me will realise thatI love Murder Mysteries and Thrillers. Today I have spent the day reading an absolutely breathtaking thriller called Unauthorized Access. This was by an author who is new to me called Andrew McAllister and believe you me I will be looking out for his next book and be the first in the queue to buy it. It is essentially a cybercrime book but mainly a very fast paced thriller. It starts mainly as a Cyberattack on an American Bank, which causes chaos as people's accounts are wiped out. When the FBI are called in they quickly decide that the attacker is Rob Donovan one of the computer experts at the bank. Protesting his innocence, Rob is believed by no one and goes on the run to try to prove his innocence. But there is so much more to this book and there are many twists and turns that no one could see coming. Andrew McAllister's writing style draws you right into the story and had me on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen next. I loved the characters and could picture each and everyone of them. For a man, McAllister describes the women well (sorry I don't mean to be sexist here, it's a compliment). I felt I knew each and every character personally, whether they were on the side of good and evil, and sometimes you were stunned by which side they were actually on. This book could be read by both men and women, and enjoyed equally as much by each. There is a little bit of romance running through it but certainly not enough to have men turning away in their droves. Buy it and read it immediately. You certainly wont regret it.