Title: Bloodroot
Author: Amy Greene
Genre: Fiction, Loved

I am normally hesitant to read things that are immensely popular. I don’t really know why, I guess it’s just my contrarian nature. But even though this is spending time on the New York Times Bestseller list the review in Entertainment Weekly intrigued me so much that I had to read it.

While my family was not dirt poor and the men in my family aren’t the kind of men Bloodroot is full of I grew up in the world of this book. The words spelled out like they are pronounced in this word (worsh=wash) brought me vivid flashbacks to my childhood and the women in my life (my grandmother and aunt specifically) growing up. The book broke my heart in several different ways and I couldn’t put it down. That’s the best compliment I can give.

Title: The Gift of Asher Lev
Author: Chaim Potok
Genre: Fiction

I do enjoy Chaim Potok books. They’re such quick reads, they really suck me in. This is the sequel to My Name is Asher Lev which I read last year.

It was interesting to read this book right after reading The Rebbe’s Army because Potok’s Ladover Hasids are the fictional version of Lubavitchers. Potok’s book was written long, long before the Lubavitch Rebbe’s death but the parallels between a movement with such a charismatic leader and the questions posed about succession after a leaders death are striking.

Title: The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad Lubavitch
Author: Sue Fishkoff
Genre: Non-Fiction, Judaism

I think just about every Jew has an opinion on and a fascination with Chabad, on some level. My opinion is of course skewed by the fact that Chabad rejects both my flavor of Judaism (Conservative) and my very status as a Jew (only Orthodox conversions count in their eyes). Even so I recognize that Chabad does very good work in many arenas and this book highlighted that good work even more.

This was a really good book. Well written, well researched and it neither endlessly praised nor condemned Chabad. It answered a lot of questions I have about Chabad and their Rebbe but I’m still left wondering about the strong messianic bent that’s present in some (a lot?) of the Chabad world and how on earth the Rebbe didn’t have a succession plan in place.

Title: The Sabbath
Author: Arthur Phillips
Genre: Fiction

I wanted to love this book. I was hoping it would be something like a fictional “Love is Mix Tape.” It was not. I try to be careful when I criticize things because there is no good or bad in art there is just good and bad to you/me. So I won’t say the book was bad. I would instead say that I wish the author had made some different choices for his characters and that a couple plot developments had been left out.

Title: The Promise
Author: Chaim Potok
Genre: Fiction

This is the first Chaim Potok book that I didn’t absolutely love. I enjoyed it, but I just didn’t love it. I read it just as quickly as I read other Potok books and I was just as engrossed but now that I’ve finished it I’m not as sad that I’m done. That being said I’m thinking about the book a lot now that it’s finished so, love it or not, it’s clearly left me with a great deal to think about and that, typically, is the mark of a good book. 

Title: Gilead
Author: Marilynne Robinson
Genre: Fiction, Loved

My rebbetzin recommended this book. It’s sort about a family of ministers in Iowa. It’s sort of about a dying man. It’s sort of about agnosticism and belief. And it’s sort of about nothing. It’s a book with beautiful, profound prose and beautiful profound sentiments and I enjoyed it very much.

Title: The Road
Author: Cormack McCarthy
Genre: Fiction

This was the first book I read on my new Kindle. Exciting! Truly I wasn’t sure how I was going to take to the Kindle, I didn’t buy one for myself because I love actual books so much. But I received a Kindle for my birthday and have found myself enjoying it very much. I usually have three books going at a given time (typically one fiction, one non-fiction and one religious book) and when I go just about anywhere I need to take those three books with me. I mean, I never know which exactly I’m going to be in the mood to read when I get to the coffee shop or on the plane. Kindle makes that process so much easier, it also makes reading in line, reading in the waiting room at the doctor’s office and all those kind of places easier and more flexible. It’s kind of awesome.

I’d been wanting to read The Road for a while but never got around to buying a copy. And then they started working on the movie. That was all the nudge I needed. I have to read the book before I get any visuals from the movie stuck in my head and I’m really glad I read this. The pictures McCarthy creates from words are incredibly vivid and have great impact.

Title: Little Bee
Author: Chris Cleave
Genre: Fiction

I enjoyed this book just fine but ended up walking away from the experience of reading it a little disappointed. Why? Well, the book jacket built up some serious expectations. It reads:

We don’t want to tell you too much about this book!

It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it.

Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this:

It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific.

The story starts there, but the book doesn’t.

And it’s what happens afterward that is most important.

Once you have read it, you’ll want to tell everyone about it. When you do, please don’t tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds.

It was a very enjoyable novel but I don’t have the urge to tell everyone about it and the “magic” of the book, as it were, was in the writing, not in the supposed “shocking” moment of what happened on the beach. I would have probably enjoyed the book even more if the book jacket didn’t try to convince me that there was a deep, deep shocking secret that knowing it would completely ruin the book. I could tell you what the secret is and I don’t think it would decrease your enjoyment of the book that much at all.

Title: My Name is Asher Lev
Author: Chaim Potok
Genre: Fiction, Loved

This is the second Chaim Potok I’ve read recently and I’ve got to say I’m a serious fan. It’s not just that I enjoy the peek inside the Hasidic world I’ll never see for myself (though I do enjoy that) it’s also that Potok’s books are just so….readable. They’re readable without being dumbed down or simplified or superficial. They’ve got emotionally complex characters with interesting plot arcs and yet, for me, they read like beach books; I fly right through them.

My Dad bought me a Kindle for my birthday, I wanted my first book purchased for the Kindle to be the sequel to My Name is Asher Lev, called The Gift of Asher Lev but that book isn’t available for Kindle. That’s ok, I’ll buy the physical book and I’m sure I’ll enjoy it every bit as much as I have the first two Potok books I’ve read.

Title: You Or Someone Like You
Author: Chandler Burr
Genre: Fiction

Oh the writing in this book is absolutely delicious. I devoured this book like I devour my friend Marsha’s lemon sunshine cake. Seriously. Absolutely delicious writing. Burr’s description of a garden made even me want to take up gardening. That’s a serious accomplishment. For the first, oh let’s say 60% of the book, I was so wrapped up in both the writing and the overall novel that I could barely put it down. But then things changed. Then the plot took a turn that I didn’t see coming and one that pushed far too many of my own buttons. The catalyst for the plot turn was actually something that the author took from his own life so obviously it pushed his buttons too.

Once my buttons had been pushed and once the plot went so very far in the direction that it went it became impossible for me to enjoy the book anymore. The demonetization of something incredibly meaningful and important to me and a naive interpretation of many details about that thing left me absolutely cold.

So what I can say about You Or Someone Like You is that it contains absolutely brilliant writing that I simply adored but I did not love the novel.