While away on vacation, I got the opportunity to read several books. For me, reading is probably one of the most relaxing activities I do. Because I’m personally wired to be a bit spontaneous in my thinking and sometimes struggle to maintain my attention on particular tasks, losing myself in a book really calms me and relaxes me in a way that I cannot quite describe. I love getting lost in a book.
So Sabbath time is a great time for me to read. Here’s where I got lost the past few weeks.
Daniel Silva’s The Mark of the Assassin, The Marching Season, and Moscow Rules
Sorry to disappoint those who thought I spent all of my time lost in some work of classic Christian literature. My guilty pleasure is spy novels, and for me, there is no greater writer in this genre than Daniel Silva. The Mark of the Assassin and The Marching Season are the second and third books written by Silva and include a short two-part series about an American CIA agent and his battle with one of the best assassins in the world. Moscow Rules is book #8 of the series that Silva started next whose central character is a man named Gabriel Allon, an Israeli intelligence officer. If you love spy novels, you have to check out Daniel Silva!
The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan [more info]
A bit of a left turn here… During the second week of our time away, My wife and I got the chance to attend a retreat sponsored by the Pastor’s Retreat Network in East Texas. We spend five days at a Bed & Breakfast with six other clergy couples with no kids, no cell phones, no computers, and no TV’s. Just peace, quiet and rest. During that time, I read Mark Buchanan’s book which focuses on the practice of Sabbath and every pastor’s need to honor and protect their Sabbath time. This book, along with Abraham Joshua Heschel’s classic work, The Sabbath, are two of the best books I have ever read on Sabbath and I would highly recommend both of them to anyone seeking to find balance in their lives.
Liars and Thieves by Stephen Coonts [more info]
This was the first book I have read from Coonts, and I found it enjoyable. It doesn’t come close to Silva in terms of the suspense and a majority of the book is written from the first person perspective of one of the characters [which tends to distract me] but it was pretty good. When you’ve read everything Silva has written, I guess you could give Coonts a try.
The Last Jihad by Rosenberg [more info]
This book was a little weird… but really good as far as a suspense novel goes. It’s set in modern America is basically a fictional story about America’s War on Terror. The story opens with a terrorist using a plane to attack a presidential motorcade. The majority of the book was written before 9/11 but prior to publishing the book, Rosenberg rewrote the story to be set in the time following the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. What’s really “eerie” about the book is that the antagonist in the book is a “nuclear” Iraq led by Saddam Hussein [this was published prior to the War on Iraq].
In this fictitious story, both of Saddam’s sons have been killed, he has prostate cancer, and so he basically decides he has nothing left to lose and tries to launch a nuclear missile at Israel and the U.S. It’s the basic story line that eventually led up to the actual war in Iraq… the notion of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the Iraqi dictator… which as we all know, ended up to not be the case. I’m not trying to make social commentary here… Just saying that story line gave me a weird feeling while reading. What really bothered me about the book was the ending… but I don’t want to spoil it…
Now you tell me. What’s the best book you’ve read this summer?