Jewish Genre Reading Challenge discussion

Use this thread to talk about your current and upcoming reading, where you're currently at with the challenge, and anything else book or reading related. You can discuss all your September reading here, not just books you are reading for the Jewish Genre Challenge.

September's "genre of the month" is Poetry. The genre we had scheduled for this month was Action/Adventure/Spy/Military, but I have no taste for it right now. Real world news is offering more than enough of that and I crave something more gentle. One of our friends and colleagues has created a poetry reading challenge for the month of Elul (which started the evening of September 3rd) so the Jewish Genre Challenge has decided to participate as well. Reading a book of poetry with a Jewish author and a Jewish topic (and any book of autobiographical poetry by a Jewish poet is considered to have a Jewish topic - the Jewish author themselves) fulfills the 6th prompt of the Prompts Challenge, which is to "Read a Jewish book in a format other than prose."

You can find our list of Jewish poetry books here: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1... and connect with the Elul Poetry Challenge through her blog here: https://elulreadingchallenge.wordpres... or on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/theelulpoet...

I'm setting my goal for the poetry challenge to reading one poem a day. I've bought two poetry books to read this month: The Animal Is Chemical and How to Bless the New Moon: Songs of the Sovereign and the Icon.

As far as how I'm doing on the Jewish Genre Challenge, I read 7 Jewish genre books in August, but none of them advanced me on either my Genre or Prompts challenge because they were all fantasy and sci-fi. It was such a pleasure, though. Reading mostly Jewish books is changing something inside me. I can't put it into words yet but I'm interested to keep observing.

For the bingo challenge I mentioned last month, I've been making progress. For that challenge all the books I read need to be speculative fiction, and I'm almost halfway done, with 11/25 read.

My August Jewish genre reads:

chysodema wrote: "I'm setting my goal for the poetry challenge to reading one poem a day. I've bought two poetry books to read this month: The Animal Is Chemical and [book:How to Bless the New Moon:..."

Awesome! What did you think of Time and Time Again? I read it in August too and loved it!

Also so beautiful that you said that reading more Jewish books is changing something inside you.

Sophie wrote: "Awesome! What did you think of Time and Time Again? I read it in August too and loved it!"

I really liked it! The disability rep was so incredibly good. Having two disabled characters just talking real talk about stuff that's annoying, stuff that's hard, feeling unsure about talking about the stuff they don't have in common, was fantastic. You can tell the author has lived experience there. The love story was sweet, too, and the story had a good twist.

What are you reading or have you read recently?

chysodema wrote: "Sophie wrote: "Awesome! What did you think of Time and Time Again? I read it in August too and loved it!"

I really liked it! The disability rep was so incredibly good. Having two disabled characte..."

Right? I felt it was really real disability rep - family members not completely understanding and the struggle of fighting to be heard by doctors. I also thought the plot twist was so interesting too - really caught me by surprise and made me feel things. And the question of 'What would you do if there was no consequences at the end of the day?' was really interesting - and Phoebe's answer was really intriguing.

I have recently read:
Stations West
Rules for Ghosting
Toward a Holy Ecology: Reading the Song of Songs in the Age of Climate Crisis
The Color of Love: A Story of a Mixed-Race Jewish Girl (would highly recommend - what a story of forgiveness!)

Also though this isn't for the JGC (it has side characters who are Jewish) Front Page Murder which is a cozy mystery.

Currently I'm reading the second book in the Front Page Murder series.

Sophie wrote: Right? I felt it was really real disability rep - family members not completely understanding and the struggle of fighting to be heard by doctors. I also thought the plot twist was so interesting too - really caught me by surprise and made me feel things.

Ooh you read Stations West! The only straight-up Western (that isn't also romance, horror, etc.) in the Jewish genre database. What was it like?

The Color of Love looks fascinating. I'm going to add it to the database, we have a small selection of memoirs.

Hello, I started the Elul Poetry Reading Challenge and I wanted to thank those who are taking part. It can be hard to do a book a day but I’ve somehow managed to read a lot of poetry. Yesterday I read most of Jessica Jacobs’ Unalone. Highly recommend!

Hi Tree! So happy to see you here! Thank you for creating the Elul Poetry Reading Challenge, which we've been loving.

chysodema wrote: "Sophie wrote: Right? I felt it was really real disability rep - family members not completely understanding and the struggle of fighting to be heard by doctors. I also thought the plot twist was so..."

I thought it was great! I loved the fact that it was a sweeping multi-generational story. And how explored some interesting topics like assimilation over generations too. The only thing I found difficult was the pacing felt a bit uneven - I felt that at some times, the time frame moved too quickly and other times it moved quite a lot slower. Otherwise, I thought it was a fabulous book and I would definately read another Jewish Western!

Thanks for adding The Color of Love to the database. Her story has really stuck with me and has made me really think.

Thank you, Chrysodema! I appreciate the support!

Since there's no October book chat yet, I'll add here that I read and really enjoyed Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik (fantasy). I'm curious to hear others' opinions if you've read it, and I am planning to dig more into reviews and commentary on it, especially from Jewish voices. It gave me a window into something beyond my personal experience where I could really feel and identify with the terrifying, oppressive feeling that the main character and her family must have had being the only Jewish family in her town and knowing about the scapegoating that was happening in neighboring towns. I could feel her sense of relief when she went to visit family in the Jewish quarter in the nearby big town, where there were some nice scenes of warm family gatherings and weddings and just family taking care of and protecting each other, which contrasted with some of the extremely cold and cutthroat family dynamics in some of the non-Jewish families that were featured in this book.

I'm still not 100% sure what to make of the magical snow kingdom where everyone is obsessed with hierarchy and everything being pure white and they had extremely strict rules around making deals and owing people a debt made you bound to them with your life. I'm still kind of processing how I feel about the ending, but I won't spoil anything here.