“Saved by the Light” by Dannion Brinkley
Best selling author, Dannion Brinkley, started off his writing career with an autobiography called “Saved By the Light”. He has since written many more books and has his own web site where he does readings and sells other spiritually-minded material.
In “Saved By the Light”, he recounts his experience of getting hit by lightning in his South Carolina home and how it had changed his life forever.
During a lightning storm in 1975, Brinkley happened to be on the telephone. The lightning traveled through the lines and sent him flying across the room. He distinctively remembers the searing pain of having the lightning travel through his body. He went from feeling such unfathomable pain to feeling nothing at all, yet he was in total awareness of his thoughts and surroundings.
It was then, he realized he was no longer in his body, but was suspended above it. Looking down, he could see a melted phone receiver still grasped in his hand, his shoes laying on the floor where he had been standing, still smoking from the intense heat. He watched people working on him, performing CPR and then ultimately, taking him out of his house on a stretcher, sheet over his face. Of course, the story doesn’t end there, as he came back from the brink of death to write about it.
Before he could be revived, and for what must have felt like days, months or even years, he traveled to a destination few ever return from, to talk about. He relates how he first came upon a tunnel, then viewed a crystal city and was taken to a cathedral of knowledge where he was imparted with revelations of the future.
Because of the experiences he’d gone through, Brinkley’s life became more meaningful. He also discovered he could foretell the future. His life work is helping others cope with the fear of death and their own mortality and teaches “there is indeed no such thing as death”. He helps people to embrace their impending death with the joy of reaching a better plane.
This is an exciting and compelling read, one you’ll definitely want to follow up with his next book “At Peace In The Light”. Some may be skeptical and some may turn into believers. Either way, the story is well-written and thought-provoking and may give a new insight as to how a life should be lived and how death should be thought of.
For more information on Dannion Brinkley, his work and his writings, visit his website at www.dannion.com
“The Ghost of Flight 401″ by John G. Fuller
A gripping story based on actual facts and witness accounts of the crash of an Eastern Air Lines flight. The plane went down into the Florida everglades on a December night of 1972, killing 101 passengers and crew members. Miraculously, there were 77 survivors.
Due to a landing gear malfunction, the crew desperately tried to correct, they inadvertently failed to notice they were losing altitude in the Florida skies. They crashed into the everglades traveling at over 200 miles per hour, breaking up along a path as it skidded through the water and tall grass.
What may be more astonishing than the accident itself, are the incidents that happened afterward. Because of the way the plane crashed and broke apart upon impact, salvageable parts were retrieved and ultimately, used in other jetliners. No one would ever believe what was about to happen, could be possible.
Rumors started circulating among the airline staff of a strange pilot or co-pilot appearing in full uniform, in the passenger seats of other flights. At first the employees thought them to be pilots who, upon finishing up a shift, were catching a ride back home. However, they would either be unresponsive to their questions or in some cases, be there one moment and not the next.
Of course, the airlines were appalled by the rumors and all employees were ordered not to discuss these incidents with anyone. It would be bad for business if passengers were both reminded that planes don’t always stay in the air or that ghosts were appearing on certain flights. However, the incidents were being investigated. It was concluded…the only plausible explanation seemed to be that the spirits of the pilot and co-pilot somehow became attached to anything that remained of their own jetliner, that being, the salvaged parts that were reused in other planes.
It’s an excellent story, especially if you are interested in the super natural and things unexplained. Because this is based on actual fact, it makes it that much more suspenseful.
This book is presently out of print, but can still be found in the “used” category on book sites. There were also two movies made based on this event, that might also still be in circulation. Even though this is an older book, the story remains timeless.
Mayada, Daughter of Iraq (Jean Sasson)
This is a compelling and excellent true story of one woman’s life and what it was like for her and others to be living in Iraq during the Saddam Hussein regime.
Living under the rule of Saddam Hussein could either be very good for you and your family or to the other extreme. As Hussein’s government was about to be toppled, the country would soon slip into a transition of utter chaos, confusion and dissolution.
Coming from a prominent family, Mayada’s life was far above that of what others may have experienced. She was free to come and go as she pleased. She was able to carry on with her job at a print shop she owned. Mayada was one of the more fortunate women living in Iraq, but her life would soon go through a terrible upheaval, one she could never fathom.
Being that paranoia permeated the country, its government and consuming Saddam himself, people could be imprisoned for the mere rumor or speculation of saying something against the government, especially Hussein. A person’s life could hang by a thin thread for something as simple as a lie. This is what happened to Mayada. So many other innocent people had already been tortured and put to death, would this become her fate as well?
This story details the course of her arrest, for allegedly printing propaganda against the government, to her imprisonment and what she and the 17 other women she shared a small cell with, were soon to endure. She would later give journalist Jean Sasson, an extremely graphic account of the torture she and each woman had to go through at the hands of the barbaric prison guards.
Luckily, after a month of constant torture and degradation, Mayada was released from the confines of the prison and later escaped the country. Some weren’t so fortunate. She befriended the many women she shared a cell with and later tried to locate them or their families, to give them whatever help she could.
Although some entries of this story are graphic and disturbing, it’s important to know what the people of Iraq endured during the reign of Hussein. Only through education and publication to the world, can things ever hope to be changed for the better. Sometimes, living in the free world, we take so much for granted. Our freedoms allow us to come and go as we please and we are able to speak our minds. This story awakens and helps to put our own lives into perspective as well. A 5 out of 5 stars!
Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
So, it’s Dickens. Incredible coincidences abound, somethimes bordering the deus ex machina; unknown sons or parents and moral considerations and thoughts fill the pages of this novel that nevertheless remains deliciously enthralling (we can guess what will happen, and because we have guessed it, somehow we want it to happen all the more). The odd manor of Miss Havisham, frozen in time, was also an element of the book I found very fascinating. I had a hard time putting it down, to be honest.
A word in passing for Joe Gargery, Pip’s brother-in-law/substitute father, who is one of the kindest and pleasant characters I’ve ever found in literature. And another word for Mrs Gargery, red-faced shrew who looks absolutely terrible in the apron that is like an armor for her.
Bill Bryson - The Mother Tongue
This is my first time reading Bryson, and I quite liked the humoristic tone he uses. I’m not sure if this book will teach anything to anyone else than a complete layman in terms of linguistics.; in any case, it still taught me, a French reader, quite a few things regarding proper nouns, pronunciation, or the fact that some archaic English verb forms are still used in the USA, but not in the United Kingdom (and the contrary).
However, I managed to find out a few mistakes here and there when it came to comparing a language to another one (mostly I noticed that with French, Alsatian and Japanese languages). For instance, he mentions some words that aren’t supposed to exist anymore in French, while this is not true (I still happen to hear them in everyday conversations); as another example, the use of hiragana in Japanese isn’t only as furigana, but also as grammatical words or verb endings. This does not tell me if there were mistakes regarding English language–I assume it is easier to make some in other languages than one’s own–but it makes some things worth double-checking.
Nevertheless, I liked the book all the same; it is an interesting read for a person who wishes to get an initiation to the subtleties and history of English.
Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D’Urbervilles
A few years later, obeying her heart rather than her reason who tells her that she is forever ‘dirty’, the young woman desperately attempts at finding happiness and a normal life with Angel Clare. But she soon realizes that what she had to bear in her teen years has forever doomed that hope for her; her fate slowly but surely takes her toward a terrible choice from which Angel himself will fail to save her.
At first, I admit that getting into this story was a little hard; that said, it might very well have been because of my nasty habit to systematically read the notes at the end of a book, which disrupted my reading. Nevertheless, I tend to consider that this book is a must-read among Thomas Hardy’s works; the description he writes of rural England, of the opinions and ways of living of different social classes, and of the trials of his poor heroine (caused much more, in my eyes, because of the protagonists’ choices and personal pride rather than by fate) make up a very interesting picture in the end.