Erika Dreifus

The My Machberet blog is proud to serve as January 2018 host for the Jewish Book Carnival, a monthly event where those who cover Jewish books online “can meet, read, and comment on each others’ posts.” Organized by the Association of Jewish Libraries, the Carnival travels around and is hosted on a different participant’s site on the 15th of each month.

Herewith, the January 2018 Jewish Book Carnival:

• As 2018 begins, David Naimon highlights one 2017 episode of the “Between the Covers” podcast: a conversation with author Dani Shapiro about her memoir Hourglass.
• Similarly, Lilith magazine spotlights an item from its 2017 offerings: Naomi Danis’s “Great Girl Protagonists in Books For Young Readers,” which discusses debut novels from Rachel Mann and Ruth Behar and an encore from novelist-in-verse Sonya Sones.
• Deborah Kalb interviews a variety of authors on deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.com. This month, she contributes to the Carnival an interview with writer Sue William Silverman on her memoir The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew.
• Over on the Jewish Book Review blog on Emunaroma, Rivka Levy takes a peek at a groundbreaking book that’s trying to break the taboo on discussing eating disorders in the orthodox Jewish community.
• From Jewish Books for Kids, Barbara Bietz sends in this interview with Susan Krawitz, author of the middle-grade novel, Viva Rose!. (Barbara adds: “The book is inspired by the author’s own family stories about Pancho Villa.”)
• Over on The Whole Megillah, Barbara Krasner interviews Lesléa Newman about her new poetry collection Lovely.
• The Englewood Review of Books, a weekly book review published by Englewood Christian Church in Indianapolis, contributes Jon Sweeney’s review of Rabbi Shai Held’s The Heart of Torah: Essays on the Weekly Torah Portion
• Over on the Yiddish Book Center’s site, current Yiddish Book Center Fellow Miranda Cooper has recently written on Yiddish detective fiction, Michael Chabon, and the politics of imaginary yiddishkayt.”
• The Book of Life podcast takes a hiatus-break to interview with chair of the 2018 Sydney Taylor Book Award committee about January’s winners.
• Speaking of: The 2018 Sydney Taylor Book Award winners are announced on the Association of Jewish Libraries People of the Books blog.
• And finally: Right here on My Machberet, I recently compiled the annual look at “My Year in Jewish Books.”

To be added to the email list for future Carnival calls for submissions and postings, please email Heidi Rabinowitz with your request.