Late to the Party Review: My Name is Asher Lev

My Name is Asher Lev is a book that wastes no time getting started. Our protagonist, the Asher Lev of the title, confesses that he is the artist that everyone has been talking about. He is determined that people should know the truth. Asher is ready to stop the rumors and the gossip by telling the story of his life, his struggles with his parents, and the art that dwells in his soul and compels him to paint things that no good Jew should even think of.

Chaim Potok is wonderfully adept at writing a book that is full of everyday moments, but conveys volumes. The things that happen here are not extraordinary in themselves: a woman grieves the death of her brother, a boy wishes his father was home more, a young man becomes the apprentice of an (in)famous artist. But the writing captures every bit of emotion that goes with those moments. 

This story (like all of Chaim Potok's stories) is intensely concerned with what it means to be Jewish. Asher's parents are deeply committed to the well-being of Jews around the world, and their son misses them as they work to bring Jews out of Stalin's oppressive Russia. Their faith, and the well-being of their fellow Jewish people, is of paramount importance to them. When Asher begins exploring his gift for painting, his parents disapprove of something that is a waste of time at best, and perhaps even sacrilegious. In another author's hands, this book would show how different the reader's life is from the lives of these characters. Instead, it highlights how much people are alike.

My Name is Asher Lev is a beautifully written story about faith, family, and art. It is a universal book for every and any reader, even the one who has never been to synagogue or held a paintbrush in their hand.


My Name is Asher Lev
By Chaim Potok
A Fawcett Crest Book 1972
350 pages
From my shelves


Late to the Party Reviews are my thoughts on the books everyone else read years ago. I'm finally getting to them, so make sure to chime in and tell me about your experience with these stories!

It's Monday and the AC is my friend

It's disgustingly hot, as you all know. I pretty much just want to sit next to my air conditioner and drink something cold. But life goes on, in spite of the heat. D was at soccer camp for a few days this week, which meant I had the opportunity to deep clean his room. I am hoping to get this house a little bit organized before school starts in September!

I read World of Trouble this week and I have a lot of thoughts. I see a blog post about apocalyptic stories in the near future. I also read The Book of Esther. That story went some places I did not expect!

                  

Right now, I'm reading Jonathan Edwards which is a giant biography I have had on my shelves since I got it as a college graduation gift. Because it's so big, I will be using my tried and true system of reading at least 25 pages in my giant book each day and reading something else alongside it. The more manageable book this week is Simon Van Booy's Father's Day.

                    

What are you reading this week?

Books for the Theatre Nerd

In college, I was a double major in English Literature and Theatre Arts. I am that theatre nerd you remember from high school who starred in all the shows and was president of the drama club. There was one glorious summer that I spent at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center taking singing, acting, and dance classes. So I am beyond happy when I can combine my two loves and spend hours reading about the people who write and perform on Broadway and the journey that stories take from page to stage.

Many musicals you know and love draw direct inspiration from books. Lin-Manuel Miranda had the idea that would eventually become the musical Hamilton when he read the biography by Ron Chernow. Long-running musicals Les Miserables and The Phantom of the Opera are based on the classic novels of the same name. Even children's books can be the impetus for a musical, as we saw with Matilda and this year's Tuck Everlasting.

    

But maybe you don't want to read the inspiration for your favorite show. Maybe you have a performer you adore and you painstakingly save up to see them every time they appear onstage. Fear not. Many Broadway babies have written memoirs. Kristin Chenoweth wrote about her beloved voice teacher, being adopted and, of course, starring as Glinda in Wicked. Alan Cumming and Patti LuPone have written about their lives onstage and off. Neil Patrick Harris used a choose your own adventure format for his book. You can even get inside the brain of composer Stephen Sondheim in his book Finishing the Hat and its sequel.  

               

Then again, maybe you are thinking bigger. Maybe you want to know about musical theatre in general. Whose crazy idea was it to break into song in the middle of a play? You can check out The American Musical Theater. Are you curious about the effect that theatre has on kids? Drama High is the book for you. Maybe you eat up stories of young actors moving to NYC with just a suitcase and a dream. Then you need to read Making It On Broadway.

                

So there you have it, belters and tap dancers. Those are some of my favorite books about the magic of theatre and the people who make it happen. What books do you recommend?

Mini-reviews: Sleeping Giants and Paper and Fire

Rose Franklin is a normal girl out riding her bike when the earth gives away beneath her and she falls into a giant metal hand. She wakes up in a mysterious room with walls covered with foreign carvings. Years later, Rose is grown up and she is the lead scientist investigating the room and the hand. As the pieces start to come together, Rose and her colleagues learn that the thing they have discovered could change everything for them and for the entire world.

This is a book where it's fun to go into it without a lot of knowledge. The story is told in a very unique way, as an unidentified interviewer grills each character about what has happened under their watch. While it sounds impersonal, it is actually a fascinating way to get to know each character and how they react under pressure. Neuvel is great at pulling away one layer at a time and raising the stakes with each decision the characters make. This story gives readers plenty of food for thought about power, technology, and the things we will sacrifice to reach our goals. I can't wait to see what happens in the second book.

Sleeping Giants
By Sylvain Neuvel
Del Ray April 2016
320 pages
From the library

Jess Brightwell made it through training at the Great Library, the institution that controls all of the books and knowledge in the world. But things are not going quite as he had hoped. His best friend Thomas has been killed, his friend Morgan is locked away, and Jess isn't sure who he can trust. The Library is powerful, but it may not be good. Jess will have to decide which side to fight on, because the only certain thing is that the Library does not allow opposition.

Paper and Fire has the tough job of every second book. It has to keep the plot moving, fill in some back story, and propel the characters towards the final adventure. I think this book thankfully did not succumb to the second book slog. The plot kept moving, even if the relationships felt a little surface. Best of all, Caine has imagined an incredibly rich world for Jess and his friends to journey through. Each city has its own feel and its own rules and there are people in each locale fighting to keep knowledge hidden or trying to bring it to light, all under the watchful eyes of mechanical beasts. The third book promises to take us to places that the reader has never seen before and I will definitely be along for the ride. 

Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)
By Rachel Caine
New American Library July 2016
357 pages
Read via Netgalley

It's Monday and we had an anniversary!

Hi bookish people. What's happening in your neck of the woods?

It's been busy around here (which is no surprise to any of you who have been here more than once). The kids had Vacation Bible School a few days this week. Husband and I went out for dinner on Friday night to the Melting Pot to celebrate being happy, old married people for nine years.

On Saturday, the whole family pitched in at a work day at the church. There was a lot of pulling ancient furniture and unused paint out of the basement. BG looked like a coal miner by the end of the morning and D may have had a slight mishap with a hammer and his head, but everyone made it home into the bathtub more or less in one piece.

This week I read Marrow Island, which turned out to be much more intense than I anticipated. Then I picked up Adam Haslett's novel Imagine Me Gone, which follows a family dealing with their father's mental illness. I also managed to finish Why Church Matters on Sunday, while waiting the stroganoff to finish cooking.

      

Next up on Mount TBR is World of Trouble, the final book in the Last Policeman series. Then I'll be reading The Book of Esther. 

                        

What are you reading this week?

July Wrap-Up and What I'm Into

I'm pretty sure July went by in about five minutes. I feel like D just got out of school and now people are starting to talk about September! This month, we took a short jaunt to Washington, D.C., I saw Hamilton, and the kids went to Vacation Bible School. We've also been watering our church garden once a week and enjoying lots of cucumbers, zucchini, and tomatoes as a result!

She's got a necklace, her big brother's backpack, and a giant stack of books.
She's good to go! 

We read everywhere. 

So we are down to five more weeks of summer here in NJ, people. What are your favorite summer activities? What should we try to fit in before September comes calling?

What I Read/Reviewed:
I only reviewed five books this month. This summer has been good for reading, but I'm just not feeling that motivated to write reviews. All of the books that I reviewed were fiction, but I did write a post this month about getting into nonfiction! Four were for review and one was from the library. I am finding a lot of freedom these days in alternating between review books, library books, and my own books while not feeling pressure to review the books in the later categories. 

                       

                 The Fifth Avenue Artists Society     What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours 
                   Summer Days and Summer Nights     The Gilded Years      June

Favorite posts:
I wrote about some easy ways for fiction fans to try nonfiction. I'm also jumping back into some Top Ten Tuesday posts with this one about books that made me want to learn more or try new things.

What I've Been Watching:
I've been watching the later seasons of Glee some nights but, other than that, I feel like nothing is sticking. I tried Crazy Ex Girlfriend and I've watched two episodes of Grace and Frankie, but I'm not sure I'm going to continue with either. 

What I've Been Listening To:
Next to Normal. A lot of Hamilton, obviously. And podcasts! Lately I've been enjoying What Should I Read Next, Overdue, and Book Riot's Podcast and Get Booked. I'm on the lookout for some that are not about books (I know, the horror). What are your favorite podcasts? 

What I've Been Cooking/Baking:
Dark Chocolate Cupcakes with Raspberry Buttercream Icing for a church event (picture from site)

                              

Ricotta Berry French Toast for brinner when my sister slept over (picture from website) 

                                          

Easy Chicken Burritos (adapted from a Better Homes and Gardens cookbook)
Season chicken with salt and pepper. Cook chicken breast until no longer pink. Shred chicken and put in tortillas. Then add a quick salsa made of chopped tomatoes, mango, and cilantro and a tablespoon or two of lime juice. Top with cheese and sour cream if you like and enjoy with rice! 


What were you into in the month of July? 

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Books I'd Buy This Second

Imagine this. You are sitting in your comfy chair or curled up in bed reading when a burst of light fills the room. It's your bookish fairy godmother. She hands you a gift card to the bookstore of your choice. It is, of course, a magic card. It will buy you an unlimited supply of books.

If this wonderful and magical thing happened, here is what I would buy:

1. Penguin Drop Cap Series
Ok, this might be cheating. But I'm going to count this beautifully designed bunch of books as one because who would be a terrible monster and choose between them?

   

2. The Hamiltome (aka Hamilton: The Revolution)
Like everyone else, I am quite obsessed with this musical. I was lucky enough to see it last week with my dad and two of my sisters. I'm pretty sure this will be my next book purchase, so I can learn what happened on the way to creating this show.

3. The Veronica Mars books
I love Veronica on my tv, at the movie theatre, and in my books. I thought the two books did a great job of capturing our favorite detective and I hope there will be many more!

4. Autobiography of Mark Twain, volume 2
You all know Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) was funny and crazy, right? He wrote his own life story, but instructed that it could only be published long after he (and anyone he might mock or disparage within its pages) would be long dead. I have the first volume, but this is the second one and it is gigantic (and pricey). I either need this magical gift card or I need to start searching for quarters under my sofa.

5. A library of great cookbooks
I love paging through cookbooks and picking recipes to try but they seem like such an extravagance when you can look up recipes online. But with a crazy gift card, I could get a bit extravagant and line those shelves in my kitchen!

                

6. The Nesting Place 
I would love to get some ideas about how to make a beautiful, yet functional and kid-friendly home. Plus this book looks gorgeous!

7. Complete Saga
This comic series is still being released, so I guess this would be a wish for the future. But I would love to have a beautiful book with all of the issues.

8. The complete works of Madeleine L'Engle
I am slowly collecting all of her books, but I would go ahead and buy them all (in hardcover!).

9. All the books on my TBR list that my library doesn't carry
Makes sense, right?


Ok, that's nine and not ten but I think that will do! Thanks to The Broke and the Bookish for this fun question! What books would you run out and buy if someone handed you an unlimited gift card?