Even on the Reading Front, 2020 Was a Crappy Year

I set out to read 12 books during the year, but never clicked the “Start Challenge” button on goodreads.com. Talk about foreshadowing…

No excuses here but that the year sucked us dry in so many ways.

I started myriad books, but these three I actually finished. Interesting that all of them are fiction, not generally my genre of choice. Whatever….chalk it up to 2020!

May 2021 be a better year in every way.

I Think Everyone Read More Than I Did in 2019

In 2019, I aimed to read a total of 12 books – a modest goal, I thought, after reading seven in 2018 and a mere four in 2017. Although I didn’t hit that target, I enjoyed the books I read and, as difficult as it was, actually stopped reading the ones that weren’t as engaging.

The first one I put down unfinished was “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” by Yuval Noah Harari. Despite its best-seller status, after 115 pages, I’d had enough and moved on to something that better held my attention. “ Morgan: American Financier,” by Jean Strouse, also didn’t do it for me. Although I was interested in the historical facets of the man – his travels, family, and home, located just a few blocks from my own apartment – the financial rigmarole of stocks, bonds, banking, and railroads was more than I could handle after plodding through more than 200 pages.

Having put those two tomes aside, these are the four books I read from cover to cover in 2019.

1. When a beloved high school English teacher died suddenly in February, I purchased a copy of Benjamin Dreyer’s “ Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Gide to Clarity and Style,” in his memory and was immediately smitten with the author’s – a copy editor at Random House -- wit, wisdom, and irreverence around grammar and language. By the end of the month, I was quoting from the book often. Here’s one of my favorites: “One does not...use quotation marks for emphasis. That is why God invented italics.”

2. A random find at Labyrinth Books in Princeton, NJ, where we Hermans are frequent visitors, “Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA,” by Brenda Maddox, captivated me on all fronts. Here’s what I wrote on goodreads.com upon finishing the book in May:

Before finding this book by accident, I had little idea about Rosalind Franklin – who she was, what she accomplished, or how she was robbed of the credit she deserved for her work at the time by the very men, fellow scientists, who benefitted most from it and who went on to win the Nobel Prize, thanks, in large part, to her Photo 51.

An entirely different facet of her life intrigued me, too. Her family's Jewish history and a relative's role in British-ruled Palestine, as well as the possibility that she carried a BRCA mutation, which may have contributed to her death from ovarian cancer at age 38, were fascinating aspects of her life -- especially to a fellow BRCA mutation carrier.

I recently found a second book about her, "My Sister Rosalind Franklin: A Family Memoir," written by her younger sister, Jenifer Glynn, and I look forward to reading that one as well.

3. Turning to something lighter during the fall, I got totally wrapped up in Claire Lombardo’s debut novel, “The Most Fun We Ever Had,” which my sister, a voracious reader, recommended to me. Over the course of only 11 days, I read the entire 532 page book that tells a decades-long tale of the Sorenson family – Marilyn, David, and their four daughters – from the point of view of nearly all the characters. “Real people, real life, and a good read about one family's ups and downs that will take you away from whatever nonsense you're dealing with in your own life,” is how I described it after finishing the book in October.

4. My final book of 2019 also came from a recommendation from my sister, who lent me her inscribed-by-the-author copy after she’d met him at an arts and medicine event at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center: “The End of Your Life Book Club,” by Will Schwalbe. This one, too, I read in short order, finishing it just a few days ago, after which I wrote this “review” on goodreads.com:

Although the book initially seemed a bit slow to me, I grew to love the author and his mother through the course of reading it. From the start, his descriptions of the MSKCC waiting rooms – including the coffee and graham crackers – were oh-so familiar to me, and I came to realize that I'd met his mom’s oncologist, Dr. Eileen O'Reilly, M.D., when she spoke about pancreatic cancer at a NYC FORCE meeting several years ago. For these reasons, as well as having lost my own mom to cancer shortly after the author lost his, I feel a connection to him. Of course, all the "book talk" was wonderful, and I've added several volumes from the book's appendix to my own to-read list.

This year, I purchased more books than I read, and my goal for 2020 is the opposite: to read more books than I purchase.

Happy new year and happy reading, my friends.

The Seven Books I Read in the Last 12 Months

Last year was hardly my “readingest” year ever and I’m glad to report that I’ve done better in 2018. Having set a modest goal to read six books this year, I surpassed that mark and completed these seven books:

1. The Weight of Ink, by Rachel Kadish: This is the kind of book you can't stop reading, but you don't want to end. Filled with richly drawn (and flawed) characters, the novel's story lines are heavily built around characters’ encounters with their own flaws. The parallel stories – four centuries apart – were equally compelling, and the mystery of how each would end propelled me through. A fabulous read!
2. The Marrying of Chani Kaufman, by Eve Harris: To be honest, I was somewhat surprised this book was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize because although I enjoyed it at the time, I’ve not thought about it since turning the last page. Neither the characters nor the story’s details have stayed with me, and, it seems, there was little to ponder or chew on once Chani and her groom (I can’t even remember his name…Ben? Jacob? Shmuel?) were actually married.
3. How Doctors Think, by Jerome Groopman: I’ve eyeballed Groopman’s books many times, but only read this one after picking it up at the annual Bryn Mawr Wellesley book sale in Princeton. As someone who uses our broken medical system extensively in an attempt to remain healthy despite heavy odds, I appreciated Groopman’s perspectives and insights, culled from both his professional expertise and his own forays into the system as a patient.
4. Mothering Sunday, by Graham Swift: “You must read this one,” my sister said emphatically, our arms already full of treasures from our afternoon of browsing with our dad at the Bryn Mawr Wellesley book sale. Heeding her advice, I found a real gem: beautifully written, poignant, thought-provoking, and sad, with more than a bit of staying power.
5. Internal Medicine: A Doctor's Stories, by Terrence Holt: Following in the footsteps of William Carlos Williams, Michael Creighton, Robin Cook, Siddhartha Mukherjee, and other physician-writers, Holt offers a collection of short stories that bring heart and soul to the clinical side of becoming a doctor. The author is a former literature and writing professor, and more than once I had to consult the dictionary to look up words I didn’t know.
6. Mercies in Disguise: A Story of Hope, a Family's Genetic Destiny, and the Science That Rescued Them, by Gina Kolata: Given my interest in diseases caused by inherited genetic mutations, this book, which details the Baxley family’s experience with Gerstmann–Sträussler–Scheinker syndrome (GSS), caught my eye. The non-fiction account reads like a novel and gives me renewed respect for pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and the tremendous hope it brings to families whose mutations cause a certain and horrible death. May science continue to search for answers around GSS and other prion diseases, and may the efforts bear fruit quickly – for the Baxleys and other families affected by these genetic mutations.
7. Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital, by David Oshinsky: A soup-to-nuts biography of Bellevue Hospital, this book is more accurately a sociological study of New York City, public health, and a colorful cast of characters including physicians, research scientists, and politicians. The early history of today’s behemoth medical center, in particular, is filled with fascinating stories, including the “invention” of ambulance service, which began with horses and buggies in the streets of 17^th century Manhattan. A dense and wonderful read!

I’m currently about 100 pages into Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari. A heavy, slow read (like so many other of my choices) we may be well into 2019 before I finish it. Having said that, I, once again, will aim to read six books in the new year, and hope they prove to be as enjoyable and enlightening as the ones I read in the year now ending.

5 Things I Wondered About Today

Admittedly, these are first world issues, but nonetheless, I spent time wondering about them today (perhaps to avoid wondering about weightier issues such as, oh, I don't know, maybe the future of this country??):

1. What is a Universal Life Minister and why are they so popular as wedding officiants?

2. When is my landlord going to reappear from amongst the ranks of the missing to repair or replace the window unit air conditioner in my living room, which has now been on the fritz (when it should be on "frenzy," as my mother would say!) for nearly two weeks? (Although the calendar says it's October, both the thermometer and the hygrometer say it's July.)

3. Speaking of the calendar and the weather, now that we’re praying weekly for wind and rain (mashiv haruach umorid hagashem), when will we see the first flakes of snow? And when will Jim Cantore be out there in the thundersnow ? Tomorrow?

4. Now that I’ve finished Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital, what should I read next?

5. Am I the only person whose Facebook account hasn’t been hacked?

Happy Sunday, folks. Have a good week!

The Bible Has More Books Than I Read in 2017

Even though I’m a slow, careful reader of what might be considered “heavy” books, much to my disappointment, embarrassment, and chagrin, I read only four books in the year just ended:

1. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain: From the first page, the author was talking directly to me, and thanks to her wisdom, I try not to beat myself up for needing space and time to decompress, for despising video conference calls that force my brain to function in ways that it was not designed to work, and – now that I’m finally writing about the book – for not marking the many passages that resonated so powerfully with me.


2. Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery: Somehow this book slipped through the cracks until I finally caught up with it in 2017. Pure escapism to a simpler time and a true joy to read, the book's brief review on my page on goodreads.com says: “Now I understand why fans want to visit Prince Edward Island. Count me in!”


3. The Beautiful Possible, by Amy Gottlieb: Having learned from Amy Gottlieb, one of my instructors at “Beyond Walls,” the Kenyon Institute’s spiritual writing seminar, I was eager to read the personally inscribed copy of this book – and it did not disappoint. Her richly detailed characters came vividly to life and the intricate weavings of the tale have stayed with me in the months since I turned the last page.


4. The Gene: An Intimate History, by Siddhartha Mukherjee: At more than 600 densely, but incredibly well-written pages, this book, more than the others, accounts for this list’s brevity. A detailed, attention-grabbing exploration of every possible facet of genetics, Mukherjee seamlessly blends his own family’s personal narrative with the history of the gene and genetics. At the heart of the volume, are the richly drawn profiles of the scientists and researchers whose hypotheses, persistence, and discoveries brought the field to life – and whose work continues to shape this critically important field today.

I’ve just signed up to participate in goodreads.com’s 2018 Reading Challenge and, given my dismal number for 2017, have set a modest goal of six books for the year. I’m nearly halfway through the first, The Weight of Ink, by Rachel Kadish, which I started over Thanksgiving weekend. Stay tuned for updates and happy reading to one and all.

#BlogExodus: Read

Sadly, in 2016, I read only six books. What's more, it seems that I purchase books at a faster rate than I read them.

The new year is off to a slightly better start -- I've finished two books and am getting into a third. But, I've also already purchased or been gifted these three books:

• A Cancer in the Family: Take Control of Your Genetic Inheritance

• The Best of the Best of American Science Writing 

• Working Out Loud for a Better Career and Life

If only there was more time to read...

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima, this post is one in a series marking the days of the Jewish month of Nisan leading up to Passover, which begins at sundown on Monday, April 10, corresponding to 15 Nisan. If you want to play along, check out this year's #BlogExodus and #ExodusGram prompts. 

One More Terrible Thing About 2016

As though the year just ended wasn’t horrible enough – annus horribilis as Queen Elizabeth would say – I was appalled to discover, thanks to Goodreads.com, that in the entire 12 months I read a meager five books.

Five books?! High school students do better than that in a single semester.

Appalling, dreadful, upsetting, dismaying, and inexcusable don’t begin to describe my disappointment, but for what it’s worth, here are the volumes that captured my attention in 2016:

1. Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America by Jonathan Kozol
2. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
3. In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume
4. Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble by Dan Lyons
5. The Violinist’s Thumb by Sam Kean

Having finished Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking before the new year was even 12 hours old, I guess I’d count this one as well.

Although I’m not generally the resolution-making type, determined, dogged, firm, unwavering, and single-minded barely scratch the surface of my tenacity to do better this year.  

With that in mind, I’m off to my reading chair, Anne of Green Gables in hand.

#BlogExodus 5: Hide

Some days it's nice to hide at home. A book and a cup of tea are company enough.

Some days I hide in my office, in plain sight, invisible, working, keeping my ideas under wraps.

In a city of millions, it's easy to hide -- right out in the open. While everyone chatters about narishkeit, I hide among them...

Alone with my thoughts.

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima, this post is one in a series marking the days of the Jewish month of Nisan leading up to Passover, which begins at sundown on Friday, April 22, corresponding to 15 Nisan. If you want to play along, check out this year's #BlogExodus and #ExodusGram prompts. Once again, this series of posts also is priming my heart, mind, and spirit to participate in Beyond Walls: Spiritual Writing at Kenyon, a six-day summer writing seminar that is an initiative of the Kenyon Institute at Kenyon College in Gambier, OH.

Ashkenazi Hair

Before a communications team meeting yesterday, a copy of Margalit Fox's newest book was making its way around the table in anticipation of her visit today as our "Lunch and Learn" speaker.

After thumbing through the book, I flipped to her bio on the inside back cover of the dust jacket.  Seeing the picture that accompanies the bio, I quipped to a colleague, "Gee, I wonder where she gets her hair cut."

Imagine my delight, then, when, in her opening sentence this afternoon, Ms. Fox noted how nice it was to be at the URJ, together with so many others with "Ashkenazi hair."

From that moment on, she held me--and plenty of others--spellbound as she eloquently and engagingly discussed the business of obituary writing, criteria for inclusion of an individual in the Times' obituary pages, and a few of the unsung heroes whose obituaries she and her colleagues have been privileged to write:  Ruth M. Siems, Ruth Benerito and Edward Lowe.

Sticking with the theme of unsung heroes and heroines, Ms. Fox introduced us to Alice Kober, the unsung heroine in her latest book, The Riddle of the Labyrinth:  The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code.  Along the way, we learned, too, about the archeologist Arthur Evans and the architect Michael Ventris, the two men whose lives, together with that of Ms. Kober, give the book its triptych structure.

All too soon, the lunch hour was over and people reluctantly returned to their desks.  I hung back, waiting in line to have my new book inscribed. As I stood facing the author, I told her of the previous day's quip to my colleague. While she inscribed my book, Ms. Fox and I spoke briefly about our Ashkenazi hair, agreeing, as so many other "curly girls" have noted, "It's all about the product."

Only when I returned to my desk did I read her truly personal and treasured inscription:

To Jane,
With all best tonsorial wishes.
Margalit Fox

Making Time for the Whole Enchilada: A #DaysofAwe Post

Photo courtesy of www.rapgenius.com

According to thefreedictionary.com, the whole enchilada is the whole thing, everything.  In an ideal world, my whole enchilada would include more quality time and less hurry-up-and-get-this-done.  In such a world, I'd have ample time and inclination for these things, which currently take a backseat in my real, overcrowded life: 

1. Finish a long-ago-begun classic novel -- and then move on to other unread books in my personal library.  (I just purchased the electronic edition of Les Miserables for the Kindle reader on my iPad, eliminating the need to schlep the 1200+ page book around with me.)
2. Watch Ian play baseball, cheering for him and his teammates.
3. Participate in a Mitzvah Inc. project from time to time.
4. Visit with Daddy in New Jersey more often.
5. Blog more regularly.
6. Write just-because notes to friends -- and send them on their way not with the click of an "enter" or "send" key, but with a postage stamp and a long, dark descent down a mail slot. 
7. Peruse cookbooks and actually shop for and prepare some of the these-look-good recipes.  
8. Learn to chant another Torah portion -- using the regular Shabbat trope.  Although I know I muttered many times over the last few weeks that I'd never do it again, in hindsight, rising to the seemingly insurmountable challenge proved to be intensely satisfying.
9. Write in a journal the old fashioned way -- not on a computer screen -- in a coffee shop.
10. Relax, make eye contact, smile, and be open to new opportunities and experiences. Who knows where they'll come from, or where they'll lead...

Inspired by Stacey Z. Robinson, this post is one in a series marking the Days of Awe, the 10 days of reflection, repentance and renewal between Rosh HaShana and Yom, Kippur.  Because Stacey graciously provided a list of writing prompts for this period, I'm going to play along...perhaps not as diligently as I did during Elul, but as time and inclination allow.

Der Mentsh Trakht un Got Lakht: A #BlogElul Post

Back in January, I started reading an unabridged edition of Les Miserables.  Under the best of circumstances, I figured it would take me about a year to read the whole book. As of today, eight months later, I’ve finished 285 of the book’s 1200+ pages. 

There’s no doubt that some of the time I might have devoted to Hugo’s tome I frittered away liking Facebook statuses, playing Words with Friends, and vegging out in front of the television with Alex Trebek, Mariska Hargitay, and Christopher Meloni as my sole companions.  And there also was the time I spent paying bills, shopping for food, cooking, washing dishes, changing linens and the like. 

It’s also true, though, that I spent other chunks of potential reading time attending Worship, Communications and Adult Ed committee meetings, being encouraged and encouraging others at Weight Watchers, and organizing and facilitating FORCE meetings for some of my local BRCA sisters.  I also talked to God at minyan, and on the phone nearly daily (sometimes more often) to my father, my sister, my Aunt Claire, and (not as often as I'd like) to friends in such places as Saratoga Springs, NY, Ventura, CA, and Hatboro, PA, among others.  Learning to chant Torah, blogging, and writing (and texting) condolence, mazel tov and refuah sh’leimah notes to friends around the country also pulled me from Jean Valjean and the rest of the book's characters.

Although I don’t have a lot of read pages to show for the eight months since I started on page 1, I do have a welcoming synagogue community, a supportive BRCA sisterhood, loving family and friends, and a rich, full life that, despite my best intentions, doesn’t leave me as much time as I think I would like for reading.

Is it any wonder that Got lakht?!

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima, this post is one in a series marking the days of the Hebrew month of Elul, which precedes the Jewish High Holidays and traditionally serves as a time of reflection and spiritual preparation for the new year.

Our Yom Kippur Browse

Yes, my dad and I maintained our minhag yesterday and after a bit of schmoozing following the morning service at temple, we drove down the road to Barnes and Noble for our annual Yom Kippur browse.

Increasingly (and as I wrote last year), it seems, the store is filled with more “stuff”—stationery, school supplies, writing journals, calendars, photo albums, e-readers and the like—and fewer books, and this year was no exception.  Nonetheless, ignoring our hunger, the thick, earthy smell of coffee from the café, and several rowdy teens, we each managed to find a few books, a chair and enough energy to thumb through our selections until it was time to return to temple for the afternoon service.

While my dad perused The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War, Explorers of the Nile:  The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure and To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, I went back and forth between two hefty selections:  Les Miserables and The Fountainhead.  Of course, the hefty selection I should be reading right now is Bureaucracy:  What Government Agencies Do And Why They Do It, all of whose 464 pages are supposed to be read by the time I get to class on Monday night.  Better get to it... 

In the meantime, stay tuned to find out what my dad and I actually end up reading in 5773—especially once my thesis is finished in December, when I’ll be able to choose my own books instead of having someone else choose them for me.

Color Me Red

Today was a gray, drizzly day in New York City.

To brighten it up, I added a little red to my wardrobe.

But this is the red I really wanted to add to my day.

So that's where I'm going now...with this other little bit of red.

I am Forbidden: A Brief Book Review

Remember when I posted this photo on Facebook back in March?

The caption said:  Look at how the package I received in today's mail was addressed! Stay tuned for details about what was inside...

Here are the details:  The package contained a pre-publication copy of I am Forbidden by Anouk Markovits, which will be published as the author's English language debut on May 8 by Hogarth Books, a division of the Crown Publishing Group.

That was the easy part.

The harder part is sorting out my thoughts and feelings about the book, which once I started, I couldn't put down.  Set in the Satmar Hasidic community, a place that seems narrower than the narrowest place in Mitzrayim, the story quickly swallowed me up.  Josef, Zalman, Hannah, Mila, Atara and Judith.  Transylvania, Paris, and New York.  World War II, 1968, 2005, today.  The characters, strictly confined by the 613 commandments, but always spinning, like Simchat Torah dancers, would, at first blush, appear to be spinning in place...year after year, baby after baby.  Some unexpected choices, however, take them to some unimagined places--within and beyond their community. 

Look for I am Forbidden in bookstores soon.

A Tale of Two Bookstores: Our Yom Kippur Minhag

Photo:  FreeFoto.com

Last Saturday at the conclusion of the morning service, my father and I headed to Barnes and Noble for our annual Yom Kippur browse.  (We do our share of browsing together all year long, but we always browse together on Yom Kippur.)

Once in the store, though, we found ourselves distracted, inattentive and dismayed at how much of the merchandise we weren’t interested in browsing—calendars, bookmarks, stationery, teen fiction, Halloween books, games, puzzles and magazines.  Despite the coffee aroma wafting from the café, we did briefly peruse the classics, and I thumbed through The Emperor of All Maladies:  A Biography of Cancer.  When I indicated an interest in reading it, my father, who rarely discourages non-fiction, said, “No…you don’t want to read that.”  Still hitting a little too close to home, I guess.  A short while later, still distracted and unfocused, we headed back to temple, where we sat outdoors—enjoying sunshine and warmth—until the afternoon service.

The next day, Sunday, it was too beautiful to stay inside so we headed to Princeton, a great place to wander on a sunny, bright day.  We both knew we’d end up in Labyrinth Books, and a parking spot on Nassau Street directly across from the independent bookstore clinched it.  We didn’t spend much more time there than we had in Barnes and Noble the day before (I had to get back to the city), but oh how much more satisfying was the browsing!  I read a bit more of The Emperor of Maladies, as well as the first few pages of Anne Enright’s The Gathering, winner of the 2007 Man Booker Prize.  My father offered to buy it for me, but with so many unread and partially read books at home, I returned it to the shelf.  It’ll be there when I’m ready.

And now, a rainy chag gives me some welcome time to visit in Cairo with Loulou and her father in The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit:  My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World. 

What’s your current read? 

Mixing It Up For 5772

Thanks to Ima on (and off) the Bima for
this pretty "Blog Elul" badge

We’ve been worshipping at Temple Emanu-El in Edison, New Jersey, since children’s services during the High Holy Days in 5733.  That was way back in 1972, when Richard Nixon was in the White House, the Vietnam War raged and we watched it nightly on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, and Roberta Flack’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face was #1 on Billboard’s Year-End Hot 100 chart.

This year, we’re mixing it up just a little bit.

For the first time ever, my father will come into the city on erev Rosh Hashana, we’ll all have dinner together at my sister’s house and then he and I will head uptown to services at Temple Shaaray Tefila, my Jewish community in New York.  A new adventure for us all…

Ten days later, though, we’ll be back to our usual minhag for Kol Nidre, Yom Kippur and, most especially, our annual early afternoon foray to Barnes and Noble.  Here’s how that tradition got started and here and here are recaps of our browsing adventures in subsequent years.

What are you planning to do to mix up the High Holy Days this year?

Ah, Arthur, How Right You Are!

"To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them."

Arthur Schopenhauer

My bookshelves overflow with books, many of which remain on my “to read” list.  And yet, last night I purchased three more at the soon-to-close Borders Books and Music store around the corner from my apartment.

Although the store looked like London after the blitz—complete with a darkened café and half empty shelves and tables already scoured into disarray by frenzied shoppers—I took my time, savoring the feel of each volume in my hand, browsing its back cover and opening pages, weighing the book's merits against the many others still available for purchase.

In the end, I settled on these:

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

If only I could delve into them right now.  But first, the reading for school, and then back to my newest read, which was loaned to me by a friend.  Although I’ve read only a few of its pages, it’s already proven to be an engaging and well-written page turner, which is more than I can say for the school assignment!

Summer Reading…and Summer Movies

For a variety of reasons, this hasn’t exactly turned out to be the summer I envisioned. No, there haven’t been a lot of lazy days suitable for plopping tired feet in cool grass and getting lost in a page-turner, no time for digging toes aimlessly in sand packed hard by endless laps of white-green, bubbly-soft ocean foam that occasionally sprays the pages of a book, not even an afternoon sipping green tea and flipping pages amidst the traffic and noise of a sidewalk café. No matter, though. I have managed to find two books that—if this was a different summer—would make cameo appearances in each of these scenes.

The first, lent to me by a friend, tells the story of the Nazi occupation of the Channel Island of Guernsey during World War II. (Yes, I’m behind in my reading and just discovered this treasure that so many others enjoyed years ago, many in book groups.) Filled with colorful characters and a riveting story in a simpler time, when letter-writing was still an art (and a primary means of communication), the end of the page turning came all too quickly for me. If only there were more letters (and more time to read them) from Juliet, Sidney, Sophie, Amelia, Dawsey and the rest, I think I’d have kept turning pages indefinitely. Perhaps a movie will be forthcoming? I hope so…

I’ve written about the second book before (once here, and once here), but never actually read it. And, even though I’ve finished only 20-some of its 460+ pages (excluding the notes and the index), it, too, is already riveting, filled with colorful characters and, perhaps best of all, is a true-crime murder mystery. In this case, though, the mystery isn’t as much a whodunit as a how’d-they-solve-it, much of which remains to be revealed in the unread pages. And, although I find that the movie often isn’t nearly as good as the book, a fictionalized account of this story was made into a 1959 flick starring Orson Welles and E.G. Marshall. Hello, Netflix…

People of the (Mourning) Book

Last week on Facebook, I pondered this question: JanetheWriter wonders when she'll regain enough patience and concentration to read again. Of course, I’d like to be able to dig into some of the many “to read” books that I wrote about here and here, but that doesn’t seem as though it will happen anytime soon.

In the months since some of those books joined the many others on my shelves, life has taken some unexpected twists and turns and a whole new collection of books is taking shape in my home, brought to me through the thoughtful generosity of friends, following my mother’s death.

The first two, Grief in Our Seasons and Mourning and Mitzvah: A Guided Journal for Walking the Mourner’s Path Through Grief to Healing, came directly and promptly from a friend who also happens to be the founder of Jewish Lights Publishing. I’m making my way through the first, a pocket-sized companion, just as its author intended – weaving together text study and mourning one page each day – and expect to get to the second one in due time.

The third -- Leon Wieseltier’s Kaddish, which according to the dust jacket, is “a record of the inner life of one of America’s most brilliant intellectuals during a year of mourning” – was lent to me by a friend when we had lunch last week. Thumbing through its nearly 600 pages, I found small, dense print, limited white space, and seemingly endless paragraphs on which my eyes cannot yet focus. Perhaps I’ll pick it up in a few weeks…

In contrast, each page in Earl Grollman’s slim volume -- Living When a Loved One Has Died, recommended by another friend -- is mostly white and dotted with just a few printed words or a poignant black and white photograph. Some of his words, I am convinced, were written just for me at this very moment:

The Many Faces of Grief

Your grief is not only frightening
but erratic.

Even though each of us faces
a death in different ways,
we share some points of reference.

You may recognize these feelings:
numbness
denial
anger
panic
physical illness
guilt
depression

These emotions are your
variations on the theme of grief.

If you experience these reactions
You are not abnormal.

There is no detour around
bereavement.

And so it is that surrounded by beloved friends, by treasured books and by the wisdom of both, I will continue to walk the bereavement path that lies ahead.

Because You Are the Kind of Person That Wants to Know

Waiting in my mailbox when I arrived home tonight was a small white envelope addressed in my father’s distinctive hand. Folded to fit inside was the obituary of Jack T. Litman that he’d clipped from last Saturday’s New York Times. According to the piece, which both my father and I had read and discussed a few days after it appeared, Mr. Litman was "a lawyer known for his cerebral, cool and aggressive defense of notorious murder defendants and his uncanny ability to persuade juries to sympathize with crimes of passion....[His] most famous murder cases involved young men from humble origins who were charged with killing young women from more privileged backgrounds."

Before sending it to me, my father had attached a Post-it note on which he’d scribbled “Because you are the kind of person that wants to know” and also underlined the last sentence in the third paragraph—“Richard Herrin, who went to Yale on scholarship after growing up in a Los Angeles barrio, was accused of beating to death Bonnie Joan Garland, a fellow Yale student in 1977 after she broke up with him.” Robert Chambers, the "Preppy Killer" was perhaps Mr. Litman's most famous defendant and, according to the article, "After highly publicized trials and lurid headlines, Mr. Litman pulled off the unlikely feat of winning sympathy from the juries for both defendants."

To anyone but my sister or me, the content of that envelope would have been baffling, to say the least. To us, however, it made perfect sense.

Let me explain.

My father is a lover of many things. Among them are true crime and, as he likes to say, “directing my reading activities.” These two things came together perfectly when, sometime during my college years, he purchased a secondhand copy of The Killing of Bonnie Garland: A Question of Justice by Willard Gaylin, M.D. and, after reading it himself, urged both my sister and me to read it as well. Having followed the 1978 trial of Richard Herrin as reported in the New York Times, my father was familiar with the case and likely snagged the book at one or another garage sale or flea market where he and my mother could often be found poking around in those days. Indeed, it is a riveting tale of two star-crossed Yale students from vastly different worlds and a critical examination of the factors that came into play when, distraught by her rejection after a passionate three-year relationship, he bludgeoned her to death in her parents’ Westchester home.

Tonight I reread the obituary and now have carefully refolded the clipping, replaced it in the envelope, and tucked it inside the dust jacket of the very same flea market copy of the book that still sits on the bookshelf in my living room. I'm grateful anew to my father for making me "the kind of person that wants to know," for “directing my reading activities,” and for steering me toward this and so many other little known treasures just waiting to be discovered.