I just got back from the quarterly journey to Portland so I could camp out for a couple of days at the bohemouth Powells “City of Boooks” bookstore and came across these two really well written and actually kind of humorous works.

Suad Amiry’s “Sharon and My Mother-In-Law: Ramallah Diaries” is one woman’s account of suffering though life with in-laws during Israel’s 42-day siege on th city. Amiry’s writing has bite and she can have you laughing on one paragraph before clobbering you over the head with something traumatic in the next. It’s a good firsthand account response for people who wonder why “they just can’t get over it.” It’s also good insight into how regular life mingles with the extreme in such a situation.

Ben Granby offers a good account of life as an activist in occupied Palestine in “Welcome to the Bethlehem Star Hotel: An Account of Life in Palestine with Descriptions of People, Places and Incidents.” I actually found this around the corner from Powell’s, at Reading Frenzy. Ben’s writing is disarming and humanistic. He avoids the grating activisty jargon that tends to drive a reader away and just describes what he sees around him.

Both books are good books for people wanting to see the human side of Palestine and dispense with the political discussion for a while.

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