Book #7 of 2019: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon This book is hard to summarize without giving away meaningful plot events, but I definitely enjoy the way that its story unfolds. It’s something of a Great American Novel, one of those attempts to distill the experience of a particular place …
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TV #53 of 2018: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, season 2 There’s definitely a nuanced conversation to be had about what this show gets right and wrong about its portrayal of American Jewish life, but overall I consider it to be a positive representation that I can regularly see myself and my family in. And it’s …
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Book #217 of 2018: The Girl with the Red Balloon by Katherine Locke (The Balloonmakers #1) I have a hard time investing in this novel’s central romance, which consists of two frequently blushing and stammering teens who basically fall for one another at first sight. I also sometimes want more from the prose, which doesn’t …
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Book #156 of 2018: The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish This richly-detailed historical fiction novel about the Jewish population of 17th-century London brings to mind Geraldine Brooks’s People of the Book, but in my opinion author Rachel Kadish does a much better job of making the lives of researchers in the modern age as …
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Book #68 of 2018: The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant This bildungsroman of a young woman growing up in the early 20th century pleasingly recalls both The Color Purple and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but it carves out a distinct space for itself with its vibrant characters and pitch-perfect depiction of Jewish-American life. Presented …
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TV #7 of 2018: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, season 1 This story of a 1958 housewife who becomes a stand-up comic after her husband leaves her was absolutely incredible. Hilarious, empowering, and so specific (and accurate!) in its portrayal of American Jewish life in a way I have NEVER before seen on television. I loved …
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Book #177 of 2017: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon In the late 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt rejected a government proposal to establish a settlement for Jewish refugees within America’s Alaskan Territory. The U.S. instead largely blocked Jewish immigration, and ultimately over six million European Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Author Michael Chabon …
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Book #168 of 2017: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud This 1966 Pulitzer-winning novel tells the story of a nonpracticing Jew in late Tsarist Russia who is arrested and falsely accused of murdering a Christian boy for ritualistic purposes. It’s a fictionalized version of the case of Menahem Mendel Beilis, and author Bernard Malamud nails the …
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Book #19 of 2017: The Victim by Saul Bellow When an antisemitic acquaintance accuses Asa Leventhal of ruining his life, the New York City Jew brushes off the accusation to focus on a recent family tragedy. But the gentiles in his life are quick to take his accuser’s side, to the point where Leventhal begins …
Book #79 of 2016: The Golem of Hollywood by Jonathan Kellerman and Jesse Kellerman (Detective Jacob Lev #1) The Golem of Hollywood reads like a Jewish version of American Gods, as written by someone like Michael Connelly. It’s a strange genre mashup, mixing a police investigation of a serial killer with elements of Judaic mythology …
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