Dine to Read

I read Exodus on the ferry from Pireaus ( Athens ) to Haifa ( Israel ) when I was 18 yrs old. i was on my first long term trip. I was on the way to Israel to escape the cold, blue, northern european winter, I had a vivid idea of what Israel was, sun, beaches, cute girls. I did however realise a bit of research might not go amiss so I had picked up a second hand copy of Exodus in monasteriki flea market in Athens. As I started to read Exodus traveling on the cheapest ferry I could find, sleeping under the stars, a completely different picture of Israel tumbled out of the pages. Yes, it was sunny and had fantastic beaches peopled by the cutest girls, but the outrage and injustice that had befallen the Jewish people a generation befor engulfed me. I did have a fantastic time on the Kibbutz's and beaches of Israel but I also met many survivors of the SHOAH who became my friends. This all came about through reading Exodus and Leon Uris's other books such as Mila 18, QB 7 and while my reading taste is ecelectic there is absolutely no doubt that Exodus remains to this day the only book to make me weep tears of outrage, but tears also of profound gratitude for the strenght of the human spirit.

You know life can be kind of fluid, ups, downs, very rarely is it consistantly on an even keel. However books and the plesure they bring can be likened to pouring oil on stormy waters, they bring a calmness that never changes. They are constant companions, some of them like Exodus for me have a long lasting effect, I can leave it alone for years, but the instant I pick it up it is instantly familiar like the oldest and closest of friends.