I’m reading two books right now–alternating according to mood. The first is called Caledonia, Legend of the Celtic Stone: An Epic Saga of Scotland and her People by Michael Phillips. It’s historical fiction, and I’m wondering, as usual, how historical the material in the book is. I’ll have to look it all up eventually. The story is set during various times in Scotland history, and then it has “flash-forwards” to an imaginary present day Britain. I haven’t decided whether I’m going to like it or not, but it’s interesting enough to keep reading.
My other book is Mayada: Daughter of Iraq (One Woman’s Survival under Saddam Hussein) by Jean Sasson. The title is self -explanatory. I am learning a lot more about Iraqi history than I knew before. It seems that the British were everywhere in the Middle East before and after WWI. And the British “created” the modern-day country of Iraq out of a portion of the old Ottoman Empire, combining Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and other groups into one fairly ungovernable country. Mayada, from the little I have read seems to led a privileged life in some ways, but the suffering under Saddam was equal opportunity. Several times in the first few pages of the book the author emphasizes that no one living in Iraq under Saddam Hussein knew when he or she might be accused of a crime and hauled off to the nearest torture chamber or prison. We have much to be thankful for and much responsibility to pray for those still living under cruel and tyrannical governments.