Title: Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels
Author: Hella Winston
Genre: Non-Fiction

Born out of author Winston’s sociology dissertation work this book deals with a handful of “rebels” who for one reason or another aren’t totally comfortable living as adults in the Hasidic communities they grew up in. Some have chosen to leave Hasidism while others are trying to live sort of dual lives. All the stories were fascinating. The reasons people had for “rebelling”* were so individual and the results of their choices so individual that no real conclusions could be drawn about either Hasidism or about leaving religious communities in general. This is not to say the book isn’t interesting or worth reading, in fact just the contrary. The book was full or real people, real pain and real joy and real questioning and reflection. I find all of those things incredible interesting and definitely worth paying attention and time to. That being said if you don’t have an interest in Hasidism or tightly structured closed religious communities I’m not sure there is much for you in this book.

*Though I can’t think of a better alternative rebel doesn’t seem to be the right word for what the people in this book are doing. They’re doing something deeper and more personal than rebelling against their larger society though rebelling is part of it.

Title: The Double Bind
Author: Chris Bohjalian
Genre: Fiction

I don’t know which I dislike more: mostly enjoying a book and then finding the ending to be a cop-out or not really liking a book because the main character only makes sense when you view it through the lens of the cop-out ending and therefore having to be relieved that there was a cop-out ending.

In any case I’m glad to be finished with this book. That’s not to say that you might not enjoy it but since one of the above described states is true I most certainly did not enjoy the overall act of reading it.

Title: Choosing a Jewish Life: A Handbook for People Converting to Judaism and For Their Families
Author: Anita Diamant
Genre: Non-Fiction

Not so much a practical “how to convert” book but more a sociological or anthropological look at converting in modern American. What to expect during the actual conversion process, what to expect from the synagogue, how to deal with the various responses to news of your conversion, conversion in historical perspective, etc. It also had a lot of good information about being both fully a Jew and fully connected with and committed to your family of origin. Good stuff.

Title: The Year of Magical Thinking
Author: Joan Didion
Genre: Memoir, Non-Fiction

I think perhaps that it’s wrong to say I love a book that is so filled with a real person’s real pain. To love, and therefore enjoy, such a book seems selfish and yet I cannot help but say that I deeply loved this book. Didion’s prose is straightforward and direct, not flowery but not quite Hemingway stark either. The tone ranges from slightly detached and clinical to deeply emotional, though still restrained. 

The book is completely and totally about the author and her responses to her husband’s death and the serious illness of her adult child. It’s all her and it is deeply honest, true and emotionally raw. I was tremendously moved.

I read a passage out loud to B where Didion is examining different kinds of bereavement. Pathological is the worst type, it’s most difficult to deal with and recover from. It’s also known as “complicated grief.” Specifically I read to B where Didion learns from medical texts that this complicated grief frequently occurs when “the survivor and the deceased had been unusually dependent on one another.”

Didion quotes a medical text: ” Was the bereaved actually very dependent upon the deceased person for pleasure support or esteem? Did the bereaved feel helpless without the lost person when enforced separations occurred?”

Reflecting on this quote I said to B “we’re fucked.” She said “Yep. I happily acknowledged our co-dependence many years ago and we’ll deal with the dramatic grief that will bring later on.”

Title: American Nerd: Story of My People
Author: Benjamin Nugent
Genre: Non-Fiction

American Nerd is a combination social history and personal memoir and in my mind it failed, in a small way, at both roles. The book lacked cohesion and a smooth narrative flow. It seemed disjointed. There were elements of Nugent’s personal history and actual historical analysis and facts that were terribly fascinating (for example the deep antisemitism that preceded anti-nerd/anti-”sissy” bias in late 19th and 20th century American society) but I can’t say I enjoyed reading it terribly much.

What I did enjoy very much were the interesting historical notes (though there were many boring or questionable facts in the book), when Nugent examined his own personal history as a nerd and the exploration of the relationship between nerd-ism and Asperger’s syndrome. However in that section on Asperger’s Nugent threw out a statistic that said 80% of down syndrome fetuses are aborted. That statistic wasn’t attributed, no footnote accompanied it. I find this perplexing and I kept thinking about it for the remainder of the book. 80% is such a high number that I was shocked that he’d throw it out without any documentation to back it up. Perhaps it’s a sign of my own state of nerdiness that I couldn’t concentrate on the rest of the book and as soon as I finished the book I tried to nail down whether or not that statistic is true.

As far as I can find there is no real evidence indicating that 80% of down syndrome fetuses are aborted. I found articles online saying 60%, 70% and even 90% are but no firm evidence to support any particular number. This brief research on my part makes me like the book even less than I already did. Since the author gave this easily disputed statistic as fact it makes me question what other historical and quasi-scientific data in the book isn’t quite accurate.