Beach Reading

by Linda Ziskind

Summer and vacation are two words that seem to be meant for each other. Never mind that the fact of summer vacations ended with college graduation for most of us, the spirit of summer vacations lives on.

For me, that spirit is kept alive by my annual list of beach books. Having left the Jersey Shore more than 25 years ago, the beach descriptor has come to mean any place I can plop myself down in reasonable comfort and grab a piece of one of the most elusive luxuries of 21st century life - uninterrupted time to do nothing but read.

For some people, beach reading is a guilt-free chance to read the latest James Patterson or Janet Evanovich, and I confess to having dipped into that pool from time to time.

But the books I've enjoyed the most are the ones that provide can't-put-it-down pleasure, along with great writing, humor, and, if you're willing to work to find them, insights.

In putting together this year's list, I came across three favorites from previous years. If you haven't already read them, do. In addition to meeting the criteria mentioned above, the three books have one more thing in common - in very different ways, all of them examine what it means to be a Jew.

I also want to mention that on August 3rd at 6:00 pm, Author Sara Houghteling, daughter of members Susan Waisbren and Peter Houghteling, will read from her critically acclaimed new novel, "Pictures at an Exhibition." the story of a family of successful Jewish art dealers in pre-war Paris. Admission is free and refreshments are included.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

by Michael Chabon

Imagine a place with a predominantly Jewish population. A place where Jews settled after World War II and built a homeland and a life for themselves. A place populated by people named Landsman, Tenenboym, and Shemets. Now imagine that this place is Alaska, not Israel.

Chabon constructs an imaginative "what-if" scenario where in 1948, Jewish WWII survivors were resettled in the Sitka District of Alaska by President Roosevelt, after the unexpected collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Now, sixty years later, this Jewish, Yiddish speaking district is about to revert to the now State of Alaska and, once again, their future is uncertain. Against this background, an alcoholic, self destructive homicide detective, Meyer Landsman is about to find that the murder he's investigating is tied to a far-reaching and dangerous plot.

The Kirkus Review called this book "..a mutant strain of Dashiell Hammett crossed with Isaac Bashevis Singer." I call it brillliant, engaging, and a great read in any season.

Everything is Illuminated

by Jonathan Safran Foer

If William Faulkner had been born into a late 20th century, tight-knit Jewish family, this is the book he would have written. Safran Foer uses some very Faulkner-ish techniques: a storyline related to his personal and family history; interweaving the past and present; a stream of consciousness narrative; and pages of idiomatic dialog. Except, instead of Mississippi, Safran Foer's territory is the Ukraine.  

The story revolves around a slightly OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) New York writer, also named Jonathan Safran Foer, who travels to the Ukraine to find the woman who may have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. His guide is a young Ukrainian student, Alex Perchov, whose mangled mastery of the English language borders on the poetic: "My legal name is Alexander Perchov. But all of my many friends dub me Alex, because that is a more flaccid-to-utter version of my legal name." Their driver is Alex's grandfather, a bitter old man who insists that he's blind, and the grandfather's "seeing-eye bitch," a female dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior. 

Careening from one mishap to the next, their search for a missing piece of Jonathan's family history becomes a journey of discovery for all of them, weaving together the often unacknowledged influences of history, and the power of friendship and family.

Absurdistan

by Gary Shteyngart

Misha Vainberg, the lazy son of the 1,238th richest man in Russia, with little interest in anything but whiskey, women, and sturgeon, is sent to the United States to go to college and shape up. But on a visit back to Russia, his Russian Mafioso father is charged with murdering an American businessman, making it impossible for Misha to return to the U.S.

Desperate to go back, though, he travels to Absurdistan, a new country being created out of a staged war, to purchase Belgian citizenship and a passport. Local gangsters, the orchestrators of the staged war, are being funded by a large American corporation and, together, they devise a plan to have the U.S. government pour billions of dollars into their new country. Misha, stranded in the local Hyatt Hotel, which is also serving as the war headquarters, becomes witness to a not-too-subtle satire on political hubris, the battle for oil, and war profiteering. His sardonic commentary even targets his own religion. My favorite line is: "Whatever you may think of Judaism, Lyuba, in the end it's just a codified system of anxieties..."