Since it's my birthday soon, I've bought myself some books as a personal indulgence amidst all the filthy weather.
Linda Grant, a British novelist and Guardian writer, several of whose books, including the Orange Prize-winning When I Lived in Modern Times, are set in Israel tells of her extended stay there in 2002/3 in The People on The Street: A Writer's View of Israel. Grant writes that as a "category error, a British Jew, when everyone knows that the British are tactful, decorous, well0mannered, prudent, prone to meaningful silences and Jews are - well, the opposite. She's in Israel, "...not out of Zionism or interst in the Middle East conflict, but because the moment I put my foot down there, everything was half familiar. I had half the story already inside my head and was avid and eager to learn the rest".
Amazon also made a good choice as to what I would be interested in reading next. Continuing on my quest to figure out what's been going on in Iraq, I also bought Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, the highly-praised account of the invasion and its aftermath by Washington Post military correspondent Thomas Ricks.
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