Jules > Recent Status Updates

Even in the interwar period, teenage boys were reading Nietzsche to show how cool they were. Only then, their peers scoffed and said 'read Marx, you dummy!'

So far Refael'ke is my favorite, especially now that the Bund have shown up.
I love it but after reading books in a couple of days I'm annoyed at my own pace.

So far this Yiddish novel is the perfect opposite of the Japanese one I just finished. And so far it's what I was craving- something homey and grounded; a world still full of people wrestling with tradition, religion and the future.

It's like a very informative pre-recorded training. Should I be reading it with a gardener's dictionary? Sometimes...

Hate reading the end of this series. 152 pages in and I'm feeling a bit murdery.

It is obvious it was written by two people with sections shifting in tone/voice. After reading Here Where We Live Is Our Country this is a let down. It also seems to be poorly researched, with references looking at a handful of 20+ year old sources.
They say inane things like: "it was easy to appeal to the belief in the common interest when everyone attended the same synagogue..." Synagogue politics anyone?

Book 3 of what a teenage boy thinks consent and relationships looks like. This seems like the book you write when there's been a big gap between books.
The gender roles, even amongst dragons (who they take pains to remind us are no more animals than humans...) lack fluidity. I'll definitely finish the book, and probably the series, but it's giving serious red flags.

Cats + 1920s Montreal? Yes! Unfortunately, the book doesn't feel pre-loi 101 with its French street names and Francophone main character (who feels very Anglophone).

Tentatively excited to read about Bundism, although I'm a little worried about the casual prose and how much her family history is already intruding.

I suspect the impetus for this book was relaying all the weird things monks talk about.

The middle section from the husband's view was well written but terrible. Way too much time spent in that dude's head, but now we're on to second wife's version, which will hopefully be as good as the first wife's section.

Hard to believe compasses were thought of as magic

The use of hallucinogenic herbs to guard a library is pretty brilliant.

MSM monks, murder and mystery in a library. And apostasy.

This is delightful.

I'm reading the sections out of order but Benjamin's journal entries about Brecht are a delight.

What on earth am I reading?

I'm loathe to finish it because it's an amazing soporific.