Book #173 of 2025: Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon A sprawling novel of two families, one Black and one Jewish — husbands who run a used record store, wives who operate a midwife practice, and teenage sons who are secretly romantically involved — in a time of turmoil for their extended California community. I’ve generally …
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Book #239 of 2019: Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon Gentlemen of the Road (working title, per the author’s afterword: Jews with Swords) is an exciting, swashbuckling adventure through 10th-century eastern Europe, and definitely one of the rare novellas that doesn’t feel at all abbreviated. Michael Chabon excels at bringing this historical period to …
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Book #155 of 2019: The Final Solution by Michael Chabon This novella offers a sparse but effective character study of an aging detective, unnamed yet clearly intended to be read as Sherlock Holmes. Feeling adrift in the new century, he comes out of retirement to help a young Jewish refugee from Hitler’s Germany — hence …
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Book #78 of 2019: Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son by Michael Chabon This 2009 book from Michael Chabon is an excellent memoir, focused less on the novelist’s specific life history and more on his general musings about parenting and gender roles, as filtered through his own experiences. …
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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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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