Post­ed by Salma Felah

Car­ol

This month, I am read­ing The Sev­en Good Years by Etgar Keret. It is as fun­ny, as odd, and as true as his unfor­get­table and enter­tain­ing short stories.

Miri

Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza by Adi­na Hoff­man and Peter Cole is an inter­est­ing look into a world of Jew­ish schol­ar­ship I knew noth­ing about, and a good Jew­ish history. 

Bec­ca

The Life of Louis Kahn by Wendy Less­er is an extreme­ly per­son­al sto­ry because it is about my grand­fa­ther. It is very inter­est­ing to me to read a sto­ry I have heard about in pieces. It is extreme­ly well writ­ten, and even though it has not come out I rec­om­mend it to all!

Sophie

I haven’t start­ed yet, but I am very excit­ed to read The Hired Girl by Lau­ra Amy Schlitz this month!

Nao­mi

Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer is an inter­gen­er­a­tional look Amer­i­can Jew­ry, its rela­tion­ship to Israel, the Holo­caust, Jew­ish rit­u­al, pol­i­tics, tech­nol­o­gy, and media (among oth­er things…) and how they each play out in a domes­tic space and the world more generally.

Evie

This month, I am read­ing I Cap­ture the Cas­tle by Dodie Smith. Set in the Eng­lish coun­try­side dur­ing the 1930s, it is nar­rat­ed by a young girl who lives with her fam­i­ly in a decrepit cas­tle in Eng­land. So far it is a good read, but I have not fin­ished it yet!

Joyce

This month, I am read­ing The Wait­ing Room by Leah Kamin­sky. Her writ­ing is com­pelling and her char­ac­ters are already liv­ing with me — and I just started!

Suzanne

At some point in every­one’s life, you dream about ​“run­ning away.” Leave Me by Gayle For­man is that sto­ry. Over­worked, very busy moth­er, wife and full-time edi­tor, Mari­beth Klein gets sick and can not recu­per­ate. This nov­el is about what Mari­beth does to face her real life again.

Nat

I’m rid­ing the last month of sum­mer for all it’s worth with my August reads. Cur­rent­ly I have my nose burred in Moon­glow: A Nov­el by Michael Chabon and an upcom­ing Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Tom­my Wieringa’s These Are the Names, which won the 2013 Lib­ris Prize in its orig­i­nal Dutch. It does­n’t take long to see why: I’m only a few chap­ters in and I’m already spell­bound by the nov­el­’s bal­ance of mun­dane and mys­te­ri­ous between two seem­ing­ly inhar­mo­nious sto­ries with­out ever strik­ing a dis­cor­dant note.

And for those won­der­ing how Moon­glow com­pares to his pre­vi­ous nov­els: Chabon’s back.

Relat­ed Content:

• July 2016 Jew­ish Book Coun­cil Staff Picks
• August 2015 Jew­ish Book Coun­cil Staff Picks
• August 2013 Jew­ish Book Coun­cil Staff Picks