.: ShaolinTiger - Kung-Fu Geekery :.

Part melodrama and part parable, Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven weaves together three stories, all told about the same man: 83-year-old Eddie, the head maintenance person at Ruby Point Amusement Park. As the novel opens, readers are told that Eddie, unsuspecting, is only minutes away from death as he goes about his typical business at the park.

I don't usually read books from the best sellers or top 10 list, I tend not to be a sheep, reading completely different stuff from an eclectic range of genres.

My bookshelves are filled with hardcore hacking tomes, fantasy, sci-fi, biographies, crime books, martial arts manuals, health and philosophy books and so on.

For once the last few months when I was traveling so frequently I decided to devour some of the tops picks, the best sellers..

The first I chose was this, The Five People You Meet in Heaven. I thought it was some kind of sappy self-help book, but I wanted to know why fairly sane people kept raving about it.

Mitch Albom got famous with his previous book Tuesdays with Morrie, another massive hit. I might read that too given time.

It's a cute story, it's easy to read and it's enjoyable. It's well paced, not patronising and kind of sweet in a non-sickly way.

Really though it's the same old tale, what goes around comes around, karma and all that but told in a slightly different way.

Definately worth a read, easy to pick up and finish in one shot.

It's not ground-breaking, or fantastic, but it's good. It's beauty is in its simplicity, yeah there's pages of cliches, but its straightforward it's not pretending to be artsy or intellectual or bourgeois.

It is nice to read a book now and then that is just easy to read and enjoyable.

Worth a try, I give it a good solid 7/10 - A good one to put on the xmas list for people you care about.