While I haven’t actually finished writing about Israel I’m going to take a small break today and tomorrow. I have three more topics to write about but I’m struggling to find the time to work through my photos and pull out the evidence for the topics. I might publish rather late on Wednesday to give me a chance to sort out those photos. In the meantime you get a few words on a book I bought on our last day in Tel Aviv. It cost me 49 shekels which is about $AUD17.50, a similar price to the same book purchased in a bookshop here, this deterred me from buying heaps of books as I wanted to in the US – why buy a book there for the same price I can pay here?

Neil Gaiman is one of those inspirational authors who changes the way we view the world. This book is all of those things and more. It’s a series of short stories and with each one I had to stop and think for a bit as he doesn’t seem to think about things in the same way as I do. When Gaiman examines the plight of werewolves we see a werewolf working as a private detective having to move areas after the full moon and only taking on certain types of cases, I’d like to see more of this character.

When Gaiman looks at fairy tales he not only takes them back much closer to the original but he also uses a different point of view. Just imagine Snow White written by the step-mother and then read his story to see how yours stacks up against his.

Gaiman doesn’t write easy stories, he doesn’t write light and fluffy stories and he definitely doesn’t write child-friendly stories. I therefore, don’t need to warn you about profanity as that comes with the territory, as do adult references and visual graphics, the way he uses words brings the images totally to life in my mind’s eye. I totally recommend reading Gaiman’s book (or any of his books) even if you don’t like the genre you will still come away with a different understanding of writing and world view-point. Here is a link to Smoke and Mirrors so you can consider buying it and making me squillions.