In 1913 former US president Theodore Roosevelt,54, accepted a speaking engagement in South America. While there he planned to visit with his son Kermit and travel throughout the continent. Known for his love of adventure, physical prowess, and knowledge of plants and animals, Roosevelt began delegating the arrangements for a trip to people supposedly familiar with the terrain.

ReBack when I decided to take blogging more seriously, I began following Darren Rowse of Problogger.Net. I like Darren because

• He’s successful, with three blogs and millions of page views.
• He covers every aspect of blogging, including writing, productivity, design, traffic, monetization and much more.

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I’m reading Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an Empire in the New World in Their Quest for Treasure, Religious Freedom—and Revenge by Edward Kritzler. In the aftermath of the Spanish Inquisition, Jews, who were forced to emigrate in order to practice Judaism, often ended up in the New World.

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The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson is a sequel to The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. When someone from the book club asked my opinion I described it as a poorly translated, stilted, violent, adventure story with wildly improbably plot turns. But one of the women in my book club loved it. She says that that is just how the Swedish write. So I decided to try the sequel.  One of the early scenes describe a shopping trip to Ikea in three page, including the color of each item purchased for outfitting her new apartment. But I stuck with it, and by the time I was a third of the way through I was hooked.

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Daniel Gordis, Senior Vice President and Senior Fellow of the Shalem Center, sent me a review copy of his new book, Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End . The title highlights the contradictory nature of the book’s theme: Israel has difficult and seemingly intractable problems, but there are solutions. Gordis builds his case carefully, with anecdotes and historical tidbits of information. In the chapter on early Zionism, we learn that Bialik’s famous poem, Nad-Ned, has a hidden message. Nad-Ned has been set to music and causes a Pavlovian reaction with the caretaker bursting into song whenever a child is put in a swing. One line asks, mah lemaalah, mah lematah?, or “What is up, what is down?” Gordis points out that Bialik chose this line from a discussion in the Mishnah (Tractate Chagigah) about the limits of questioning God’s actions and maintains that Bialik means to disparage the rabbis’ arguments. Despite the strong secularism of many early Zionists, they valued Jewish history, tradition, and ethical teachings. Bialik would have been shocked to see the lack of Jewish knowledge and identity of many modern Israelis. Gordis’ son met a young man who had never heard of the Shema, the central Jewish prayer affirming God and said twice a day and on one’s deathbed. I know a woman whose 12-year-old neighbor, one Friday night, asked her why she had lit candles. A generation that lacks Jewish identity and cultural and historical context, a generation that has not learned the value of Judaism, will have a hard time finding reasons to defend itself against threats. Gordis describes an interview with two Sudanese refugees, living in a converted shipping container and awaiting an answer regarding their legal status.  As they began their story he mentally prepared himself for the refugees’ complaints about their treatment and wondered whether it had been wise to bring his teenaged son.

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I’m away for a few days without my computer (scheduled post). Instead I brought three non-fiction books:

1. Writing Life Stories by Bill Roorbach, along with pen and paper. If you’ve ever thought about writing memoirs or creative non-fiction, Roorbach is the best: entertaining, encouraging and inspiring. I’ve had the book for a while and am dying to finish it, but if Roorbach tells you not to continue until you’ve done the exercise, you listen. Now is my chance.
   When exercises are hard, I remind myself (like Roorbach does) that they don’t have to be good.

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Geraldine Brooks’ historical novel, The People of the Book, is based on the mysterious past of the famous Sarajevo Haggadah. Brooks intersperses the modern-day adventures of a book-restorer with a fictionalized account of the Haggadah’s creation and its movement from one destroyed Jewish community to another.

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An interview with the author appears below.

Chaya Rosen is a young woman living in Israel. She recently published Backstage with CBC: The Chaverim Boys Choir Live (Targum Press), a book for religious preteens.

Read more on New Jewish Book for Pre-Teens: Review and Interview…

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I was the only one in my book club not to like Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. Since my taste is usually similar to at least some of the members I decided to give Patchett’s new book Run a chance.

Read more on Book Review: Run, by Ann Patchett…

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Karen Armstrong attended a convent school in England. A scholarly, introspective child, her feelings of social isolation and an overwhelming desire to feel close to God led her to join an austere order as a postulant against her parents’ wishes. She was seventeen. In Through the Narrow Gate: A Memoir of Spiritual Discovery, she describes seven years of convent life.

My daughter asked me what made the book so good, and I explained that aside from telling a good story, Armstrong excels at describing severe cognitive dissonance. She recognizes the unreasonableness of the convent’s demands for total obedience and complete emotional suppression (postulants “kept silence” and never showed preference for one Sister over another), yet accepts the nuns’ teachings that her concerns were symptoms of her own pride and “worldliness.” She works even harder at humbling herself in this way, because she hopes it will help her grow spiritually and put God above all.

The incidents she chooses to share shed light not only on Karen’s own conflicts, but those of the nuns themselves. With Vatican II, the convents underwent a drastic reform and future postulants will no longer be limited to two pairs of underwear a week and two family visits a year. The nuns are unsure how to deal with the new guidelines, and their charges receive contradictory messages.

After Armstrong takes vows, the order sends her to Oxford to study literature and canon law even though they have forbidden her from opening a book for two years. Once there the cognitive dissonance grows and she becomes physically ill, yet she is told that she is “anxious” and “calling attention to herself.” When she decides to leave the order, she easily receives a dispensation from Rome as well as funds to start her new life.

Armstrong continues the story of her difficult adjustment to secular life in the equally dramatic and compelling sequel The Spiral Staircase. I just wish I had read the books in the proper order.

Since leaving the convent Armstrong has written many books on religion, including Islam and A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. She is considered an apologist for Islamic terror in some circles.

Other bloggers are also writing about books (I stole this list from Leora):

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