On the bookshelf

By Diana Brement, Jewish Sound Columnist

Dear readers who read: For over a decade I have written these quarterly book reviews, reading or skimming 15 to 20 books over six weeks, and reporting back to you. But the time has arrived when I no longer have the time for that, so we are trying a new format. Through my eyes you’ll scan the bookshelf behind my desk and see what looks interesting. Then, just as if you were at the bookstore or library, it will be up to you through research or impulsivity to decide if you want to read the book.

The mission of these book reviews is to bring you information you can’t readily get elsewhere (except in other Jewish media). I often call the books we feature here “second tier” — worthy of publishers’ attention, but not of the marketing efforts that go into fewer than ten percent of books produced each year.

To that tier we now add self-published books. Authors we would have snootily labeled “vanity” a decade ago are turning to viable independent publishing options in a world of shrinkage and consolidation among publishing houses.

Please support writers by buying their books, and support local bookstores with your purchases. And if you are a writer, I encourage you to hire an editor and or proofreader before you submit your manuscript to publishers or to that self-publishing website.

And now, to the bookshelf.

Halloween is over, but I’m going put a scare in you now. Ready? What are you making for Passover? It’s not too early to plan, especially if you are as food obsessed as me. Publishers must agree because there are two Passover cookbooks and a Haggadah on the bookshelf.

Passover

“A Taste of Pesach” (Artscroll) from the parents at Yeshiva Me’on HaTorah in Roosevelt, N.J., is a large, full-color, well-illustrated cookbook with easy but scrumptious-looking recipes. Butternut squash kugel might make it to my Thanksgiving table.

Isn’t the point of Passover to gorge on potatoes? Author Aviava Kanoff has different ideas set forth in “The No-Potato Passover” (independent). She wrote this cookbook, she says, “to change the way we think about Passover food, and to put an end to the cooking rut” that comes with preparing 24 Passover meals. Winter and summer squash and quinoa figure heavily, along with Mediterranean flavors, beautiful color photos and simple instructions.

If you’re looking for a new Haggadah, “Wellsprings of Freedom: The Renew Our Days Haggadah” by Rabbi Ronald Aigen (independent) brings a fresh perspective with more gender equality in story and language, a touch of mystical tradition, and more content from Torah and Midrash.

Holocaust

Riveting Holocaust memoirs are still coming. With most survivors well into their 70s and beyond, it’s important to get these stories into print for the coming generations.

Despite being the youngest person on Schindler’s list, Roman Ferber still went from the Krakow ghetto to Auschwitz. He and author Anna Ray-Jones tell his story in “Journey of Ashes: A Boyhood in the Holocaust” (independent). Author Enrico Lamet’s family took a different path, managing to escape Austria for Italy, finding sanctuary in the small town of Ospedaletto. The effects of the war and being Jewish are still felt there, which Lamet described originally in “A Gift from the Enemy” (Syracuse University).

Memoir

Sandra Hurtes’ “The Ambivalent Memoirist,” (independent) is not quite a Holocaust memoir. However, her parents were both survivors and their history and culture seeps into Hurtes’ life. This book — a nicely produced, self-published volume — is a series of brief vignettes based on the author’s blog in which she reflects on family, issues of independence, writing and publishing.

Originally published in 2011, “Swimming in the Daylight: An American Student, a Soviet-Jewish Dissident, and the Gift of Hope” (Skyhorse) takes on a different chapter in Jewish persecution. Author Lisa Paul was a 23-year-old Catholic American college student living and working in Moscow in the early 1980s. Her Russian tutor, Inna Meiman, was a Soviet-Jewish dissident and refusenik. Paul documents their unlikely friendship and her actions on behalf of Soviet Jews when she returned to the States. This edition has a new foreword by Natan Sharansky.

Local author Ellen Newhouse chronicles a different kind of horror in her memoir, “Nothing Ever Goes on Here” (New Media). Growing up with an outwardly charming, but cruelly abusive father and a mentally ill mother unable to stand up for herself and her children, Newhouse managed to escape the confines of her personal history and heal. She describes memories of her childhood and young adulthood in connected vignettes, including the joy she felt going to synagogue as a child.

In Michele Raffin’s charming “The Birds of Pandemonium: Life Among the Exotic and the Endangered” (Algonquin) the former Silicon Valley executive tells us how she went from nursing one injured finch back to health to founding Pandemonium Aviaries, one of the largest bird sanctuaries and rare bird breeding facilities in the country. The author works to protect and reproduce endangered species and their habitats.

Poet Marcia Falk takes on memory as well as blessings and musing on the High Holidays in this new collection of poems, “The Between Days” (Brandeis).

It’s not a memoir, but “Seven Chinese Questions, Seven Jewish Answers” by Eric J. Friedman, MD (Nanjing) arose from the curiosity often expressed by his Chinese colleagues about Judaism when he worked in research at the National Cancer Institute. This is a bilingual book, half English, half Mandarin Chinese, with two different covers, depending on which way you open the book. Who are the Jews? What is the secret to Jewish identity survival? How have Jews contributed to world civilization? What is anti-Semitism? These are some of the questions asked and answered.

The following are newly published fiction of Jewish interest, or by Jewish authors:

“Brewster,” by Mark Slouka (Norton), a family drama.

“A Possibility of Violence,” by D.A. Mishani (Harper), crime fiction from an Israeli author.

“One Night in Winter,” by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Harper), historical fiction set in Stalinist Russia.

“Ade: A Love Story,” by Rebecca Walker (Little), a poetic tale.

“Forgiving Maximo Rothman,” by AJ Sidransky (Berwick), crime and historical fiction focusing on the Jews of the Dominican Republic.

“Hello Devilfish,” by Ron Dakron (Three Rooms). A local author takes on the persona of a monster stingray that attacks Tokyo.