Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Audio Trips

I have a 40 minute commute, so I borrow CDs from the library, specifically audio books. I like to get historical books, and I get a lot of interesting trivia. Among my favorites are Anne Frank's diary.

I'm currrently listening to "The Osama Bin Laden I Know", in which a journalist has put together stories about America's most Wanted. The author has strictly limited the stories to be either from family members and known friends of OBL, or various jihadists who have known OBL.

Among the interesting tidbits.
- OBL's father died from a plane crash when OBL was 10 years old.
- OBL's father made a fortune with his construction company in Saudi Arabia.
- OBL has many brothers and sisters, around 50 or so.
- His eldest step-brother, Salim, took over the business when his father died. His brother liked disco's and they would take trips to Europe. One time, they were staying at a bed and breakfast. The bnb owner said they had suitcases full of white shirts from designers, and they would use them only once. They also parked their Limo illegally, the bnb owner said they did not care about the daily fine because they had so much money.
- OBL started getting involved in jihad by funding NGO-like services in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He went there when the Russians invaded Afghanistan. Many eyewitnesses said OBL was a soft spoken guy who was not very impressive. But he was very religious and very dedicated to Islam.

The audio book consists of about 12 cd's so I'm slowly going thru them... stay tuned.

1 comment:

SavingDiva said...

I love to listen to books on CD, but my car doesn't have a CD player. I recently received an iPod as a present, so I put the CDs on my iPod. I've listened to 3 of the Harry Potter books that way...I also plan on listening to great literary works...