Great NDE Reads

My postmodernist upbringing makes me question everything. It is hard for me to accept any absolute truth. Even though I consider myself a religious person and firmly believe in the existence of divine Mind, the skeptic in me still searches for proof of supernatural (or divinely natural if you will) in the physical world. Our materialistic culture with its focus on science, medicine and the uncovering of all secrets, seems to fail when encountering so-called miracles: unexplained healings, intuition, premonitions and near death experiences (NDEs). I always thought: if God is real - and I believe that He/She is - why wouldn't He reveal Herself in today's age in a way that our medicated, scientifically oriented and perpetually skeptical minds can understand?

Well, judging by the number of recent NDE books that are out there, I think that perhaps God never stopped revealing Himself in every age and clime. Two of my absolute favorite recent NDE accounts are Dying to be Me by Anita Moorjani and Proof of Heaven by Dr. Eben Alexander. The authors have almost nothing in common. Ms. Moorjani lives in Hong Kong and is an adherent of Hinduism. Dr. Alexander is a neurosurgeon from the United States who never before his own brush with eternity believed in near death experiences or considered himself religious. Both authors seemed to succumb to incurable diseases: Ms. Moorjani had cancer and Dr. Alexander ended up in a hospital with meningitis. Both experienced life beyond the grave and woke up completely healed. I highly recommend these books. The authors do not promote any kind of religion or try to establish a new one. But the sincerity of their voices is beyond doubt. They have experienced something that is beyond any explanation according to the scientific worldview, and lived to tell about it. If nothing else, these books give us hope that life does not end with physical death, and that life is so much more than our ridiculously short earthly existence. Happy reading!

"The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" by Ayana Mathis

Let me just begin by saying this, if I ever decide to write a book, I want to be able to express my thoughts the way this author can. Reading this book is akin to watching a movie or looking at a painting, except Mathis uses words to paint her pictures. I could literally hear, feel, smell and taste things together with the characters. What an amazing writer!  Sometimes descriptions can get tedious in novels, you just want to skip over them and get to the "good part." Not in this book. Her descriptions pull you in. Rather than simply following the narrative, the reader literally gets transported into the scene and starts experiencing the events, reliving them along with the characters. I highly recommend this book. Even if you do not like the storyline, it is quite an experience just to read Ayana Mathis' prose.

The plot itself is centered on the life of one woman (Hattie) and her twelve children (sort of like twelve tribes of Israel, but instead of the male head of the clan, we have a female).  Hattie herself moves from Georgia to Philadelphia in search of a better life (or a "promised land") in the North. When we first meet her, she is 17 and has just given birth to twins. All subsequent chapters focus on one of her children, their life stories, struggles and joys, and on their relationship with their mother.  Hattie is a strong woman, a survivor; she might not be outwardly very warm or loving towards her children, but all of her actions are motivated by her great love for them. She is just too busy keeping them fed and clothed to worry about hugging them or paying attention to what might be on their minds. Her husband does not really deserve a mention in this review since she raises this family almost despite of his wayward and selfish lifestyle.

I think this is definitely an author to watch.  This book is also widely publicized by Oprah who selected it for her Book Club 2.0, and it is a great selection!

Let's talk about dystopias

Dystopias are widely popular right now. The Hunger Games gave this genre a new ticket to life. When I first saw The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins in a local bookstore, I purchased it for my husband. I did not think it was my type of book, but thought that he might enjoy it. I was right - he absolutely loved it and went on to buy the rest of the books in the trilogy as they came out (Catching Fire and The Mocking Jay). I was still skeptical about the books, and got only marginally interested in the first one after I'd seen the movie. However, once I started reading the trilogy, I literally could not put it down and devoured the three books in less than six days. If you have not read these books, I do highly recommend them. Collins takes the current obsession with reality TV to a new level. She describes a society that picks teenagers from 12 "districts" to fight until death in the nationally broadcasted annual Hunger Games. The country itself is rules by the "Capitol" - the only prosperous area in the country, whose inhabitants watch the Hunger Games as you would a favorite sitcom.

To be sure, dystopias are not a new invention. Fahrenheit 451, Nineteen Eighty Four and others portrayed totalitarian societies gone very wrong. My personal favorite is We (published in 1924) by the Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin who described a dystopian society based on his personal experiences during the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917.

I tried reading other popular dystopias. I mostly stick with the young adult books for this genre. The Delirium trilogy by Lauren Oliver started out a bit slow but picked up the pace in books 2 and 3. The main character also developed quite a bit by book 3. The premise of this book is that a futuristic society decides that love is a disease and "cures" all citizens at the age of 16. If you are looking to get a dystopia fix, this could be a reasonable choice. However, it does not really compare to The Hunger Games. Other dystopias on my to be read list are: Matched and Divergent. So look for reviews of those in the coming weeks.