Erika Dreifus

My Machberet is proud to serve as January 2012 host for the Jewish Book Carnival, “a monthly event where bloggers who blog about Jewish books can meet, read, and comment on each others’ posts. The posts are hosted on one of the participant’s sites on the 15th of each month.”

Herewith, this month’s goodies:

• Germaine Shames revisits Il Giardino dei Finzi Contini, the Giorgio Bassani novel that inspired Vittorio De Sica’s award-winning film, known to most of us English-speakers as “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.”
• Ilana-Davita reviews Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century, the first book by Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, whom she describes as “the Founder and President of Uri L’Tzedek, the first and only Orthodox Jewish social justice organization and a columnist for a number of Jewish publications.”
• On The Judy Chronicles, Judy Bolton-Fasman shares her thoughts on Nancy K. Miller’s memoir, What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past, in a review originally published in The Jerusalem Report.
• Over on Needle in the Bookstacks, Hebrew Union College librarian Sarah Barnard mulls over the concept of “otherness” in two works about ancient times: the fictional world of The Land of Painted Caves, by Jean Auel, and the archaeological world of Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus, by Jodi Magness.
• Jonathan Kirsch, book editor of The Jewish Journal, ponders the long literary shadow of Graham Greene in his review of Pico Iyer’s literary memoir, The Man Within My Head.
• The Association of Jewish Libraries People of the Books blog introduces the joint publication(with Ben Yehuda Press) of The Association of Jewish Libraries Guide to Yiddish Short Stories by Bennett Muraskin. (ED note: Yes, this one is a bit more self-promotional than we normally like to see on the Carnival, but for the AJL, which established the Carnival project, we’re making an exception.)
• Ann D. Koffsky reviews Picnic at Camp Shalom, by Jacqueline Jules (illustrated by Deborah Melmon). A snippet: “So, don’t be fooled by the title: this is not just a camp story. This is a friendship story that happens to take place at a Jewish sleep-away camp, and is a great read for all year round.”
• On The Whole Megillah, Barbara Krasner features a Two-in-One Notebook Special with Your Friend in Fashion, Abby Shapiro author Amy Axelrod and her Holiday House editor, Julie Amper.
• Kathleen M. Bloomfield, the power behind forwordsbooks, suggest books that can help children and families explore the mitzvah of Visiting the Sick/Bikkur Cholim.
• And here on My Machberet, I have attempted to present a “meta” post of sorts, featuring others’ posts about notable Jewish books from 2011.