On the Bookshelf

Between June 10, 2009, and Aug. 11, 2011, I wrote a hundred weekly “On the Bookshelf” columns for Tablet. Each covered eight to ten books, virtually all of them published within a month of the column date. Over the course of two years, these columns dealt with a total of 874 new books. When it was over, I wrote a retrospective account called “Around Reading.” Then in December 2011 and January 2012 I was asked to write a new column, called “Five Books,” that was rather similar, but only ran three times. (Go figure.) In any case, all of these columns are linked below.

Primary sources. January 26, 2012.

Covered. December 21, 2011.

Field notes. December 7, 2011.

Teenagers and revolutionaries. August 15, 2011.

Undead Yiddish. August 8, 2011.

What’s post-Holocaust? August 1, 2011.

Making Jews Jewish. July 25, 2011.

Running away. July 18, 2011.

Playing music. July 5, 2011.

Arguing about Israel. June 27, 2011.

On the road. June 20, 2011.

Unzipped. June 13, 2011.

Jotted down. June 6, 2011.

Medieval times. May 23, 2011.

Transfigurations. May 16, 2011.

Levantine lives. May 9, 2011.

Fusion confusion. May 2, 2011.

Literary lives. April 18, 2011.

Haggadahs, sane and crazy. April 11, 2011.

Optimists, pessimists, realists. April 4, 2011.

Bedeviled. March 28, 2011.
Behind the pink tallis. March 21, 2011.

Italian sojourns. March 14, 2011.

From Hodu to Kush. March 7, 2011.

They’re everywhere. February 28, 2011.

Shifting foundations. February 21, 2011.

Scents and sensibilities. February 14, 2011.

Ports of call. February 7, 2011.

Polemics and pleas. January 31, 2011.

Spinning yarns. January 24, 2011.

Tough customers. January 10, 2011.

Jews and Germans. January 3, 2011.

Women and work, women and prayer. December 20, 2010.

Instruct and edify. December 13, 2010.

Medieval times. December 6, 2010.

Separating Synagogue and State. November 29, 2010.

New York, New York. November 15, 2010.

Modern anti-Semitism. November 8, 2010.

Horror’s afterlife. November 1, 2010.

Romantics, old and new. October, 25, 2010.

Continuity and change. October 18, 2010.

Common territory, dividing lines. October 11, 2010.

Jews in Muslim lands. October 4, 2010.

Israel: personal and political. September 27, 2010.

Back-to-school edition. September 20, 2010.

Contrition edition. September 13, 2010.

High holidays. August 30, 2010.

Of arms and men. August 23, 2010.

Burning questions on the Cold War. August 16, 2010.

Jews of Madison Avenue, Jews of Broadway. August 9, 2010.

Strangers in strange lands. August 2, 2010.

On rootlessness and family trees. July 26, 2010.

Beach reads of all stripes. July 19, 2010.

Funnymen, radicals, and a merry widow. July 12, 2010.

Gambling, speculating, and other numbers games. June 28, 2010.

Sleuths, voyeurs, and fabulists. June 21, 2010.

South Africa, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and Spike Mendelsohn. June 14, 2010.

Propaganda old and new. June 7, 2010.

Summertime retreats and marital defeats. June 1, 2010.

Wunderkind edition. May 10, 2010.

Muriel Spark, Liz Claiborne, Herman Wouk, and more. May 3, 2010.

Infidelities, legacies, comedies, and child prodigies. April 26, 2010.

Irène Némirovsky’s Paris. April 19, 2010.

New fiction from Israel. April 12, 2010.

Beyond Maxwell House. March 22, 2010.

Translators, Nazi mutants, and Germanophilia. March 15, 2010.

Montefiore, Madoff, Mailer, and Maimonides. March 8, 2010.

Of radicals, tenured and untenured. March 1, 2010.

Freedom Riders and Lady Liberty. February 22, 2010.

Post-Soviet lit, Kafka’s heirs, and Dutch treats. February 15, 2010.

Distinguished poets and undistinguished cops. February 8, 2010.

Gurus, guides, and ideological glaucoma. February 1, 2010.

Graphic novels and vivid memoirs. January 25, 2010.

Integration, occupation, football nation. January 18, 2010.

Austen, Dickinson, blintzes, and Prague. January 11, 2010.

Believers and atheists. January 4, 2010.

Cartoons, both serious and zany. December 21, 2009.

Who owns Holocaust history? December 14, 2009.

Assimilation and anxiety, from Paris to the Pampas. December 7, 2009
‘Tis the season. November 30, 2009.

Pluralists, pragmatists, and polemicists. November 23, 2009.
Prayer, poetry, and pop. November 9, 2009.

Integration, emancipation, and animals. November 2, 2009.
Immigrants and émigrés. October 26, 2009.

Bodies visible and invisible. October 19, 2009.
Headliners and sidemen. October 12, 2009.

The latest in Holocaust and Lebowski scholarship. October 5, 2009.

Compulsions, subversions, and a TV tell-all. September 29, 2009.

Far-flung rites and gustatory delights. September 21, 2009.
Armed struggles, exit strategies, cats, and lullabies. September 14, 2009.

Wisecrackers, retailers, and Maimonideans. September 8, 2009.

Jewish liberalism, spiritual boredom, and crock-pot miracles. August 31, 2009.

Jews and Germans, Trotsky, Clarice Lispector. August 24, 2009.
Going nuts, draft dodging and Louis Brandeis. August 17, 2009.

Madoff, interfaith dialogue, British Jews. August 10, 2009.

Virtuous Poles, X-Men, Rashi’s daughters, and YA classics. August 3, 2009.

Black-Jewish harmony, sitting shiva, bat mitzvah prep. July 27, 2009.

Crusaders, myths, thrillers. July 20, 2009.

On writing in Hebrew, Primo Levi, and endless love. July 13, 2009.
What makes a Jew: Family? Community? Books? July 6, 2009.

Diasporas, tomatoes, interstellar Zionists. June 29, 2009.

Sex, white supremacists, ramen noodles. June 22, 2009.

Soloveitchik, Céline, Salinger. June 15, 2009.