As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m reading David Lloyd’s ebook on the computer but a different book before going to bed at night. I was planning to write about that book today.

But I have decided to stop reading Zeruya Shalev’s Book “The Remainder of Life”. Her writing is polished and fluid but I find the characters whiny and annoying and do not relate to the plot. I gave it a chance but yesterday I officially stopped reading it and began another. Too soon to share though – next week!

Today we took a fascinating guided walking tour in the old city of Jerusalem. The bad weather was not an issue as it was a tour of places underground! The highlight was a visit to what we call Zedekiah Cave (in English it is known as King Solomon’s Quarries). A HUGE place – worth checking out the photos on Google, my pic. here doesn’t do it justice and it is just a part. But it is the other picture I want to talk about – there is an area with thousands of names on the walls! And not just names! The largest portion of the names are those of British soldiers stationed in Jerusalem before the British left the country. They took the trouble to inscribe precise details regarding the units in which they were serving. Others, many many others, included their full addresses back home including zip codes! Can you imagine those young men doing that? The guide said they were taken to the cave to get boring history lessons… It was too dark to take a picture of the whole area of the wall with writing so I went for close-ups!

 

And finally, check out Beatrice Coron’s “Spelling Spider” which she says “spins a bilingual alphabet” (French and English). She is a paper-cutting artist. You can either see a peek from that alphabet book or hear the TED Talk. Enjoy!