If you have the budget, book a flight to Cairo, Morocco and Tunis. They are dirt cheap, relatively safe and you can get by with little English. You'll see that despite they are 3 North Africa Arabic countries, they are wildly different.

If you like the beaches, they offer lots of options (for Egypt go to Sharm ElSheikh. I have yet to do a better scuba diving).

Also I don't read books about countries. I visit them. People and especially authors are biased and also perceptions are very relative. A shitty country for someone is a home for another one.