Grumpy Jews (Who Read), Episode 4

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Here’s the transcript:

Jonathan: Welcome to Episode Four of Grumpy Jews (Who Read). This episode was recorded before Hanukkah, before the weekend, on which there was a terrible shooting at Brown, on which there was a terrible massacre in Australia, on which, Rob Reiner and his wife were murdered. We say Happy Hanukkah, and we say, may all of us find light in this time of darkness and mourning.

We wish you all the best. And here it is, Episode Four of Grumpy Jews who read from before Hanukkah.

Good morning, good afternoon, good day. Whatever time it is that you’re listening to this. This is Grumpy Jews who Read, and there are two of us here today. We don’t have any special guests. We’ll save that for next time. ‘Cause I think next time we’ll be from New York City.

We’ll do it in person. So, I am Jonathan, the youngest grumpy Jew on the line here today, with my mother, who my daughter says is younger than I am anyway, so, so we have Marti Reich who is here and. We are going to remind everyone that what we mean by grumpy Jews is we’re not really all that grumpy.

Marti: Some people have looked at our photo on the podcast and said, but you don’t look grumpy at all. And part of it is that we understand that sometimes sort of the critical eye that we bring to the world is interpreted as grumpy. So, it is sardonically grumpy. We’re actually pretty optimistic people in general.

Jonathan: We are optimistic, but you know, we’re Jewish. So, to a certain degree our optimism is tempered by the history of things not working out as well as we hoped.

Marti: Are they working out so well right now? Except we are trying to make the day better. And one of the ways we do it is we read,

Jonathan: We were, talking about, and, we’re prepping for a bigger show on historical fiction. And I was recalling that way back when, when I was an undergrad, I took a class on writing historical biographies and, how difficult it is to write something that is actual history, because of course you

Everything needs to be footnoted. Everything needs to be sourced. You can create connecting language, but it all has to be real. And what did you call that? The, I

Marti: said that is giving up being God.

Jonathan: That’s right.

Marti: That’s what a novelist is. It’s why I love novelists because they are God and they can make anything happen or not happen.

And when you’re writing nonfiction, that is, has to be true. You can’t be God. So that was the point.

Jonathan: And I think interestingly enough, this is a way into another discussion that we’ve been having because if the novelist is God and we are in conversation with God, right? When we read a novel, when we.

Listen to the novel as opposed to read the novel. Our conversation is not just with God anymore. Our conversation is with the author and the interpreter of the book who is reading it to us. So suddenly having someone presented in a voice is an intermediary. The conversation is more complicated. It’s also as Sadie would had said, it’s much, it’s more constrained because we no longer have the freedom to imagine what the characters sound like.

Marti: That’s true. But the other thing that Sadie said is if you space out while you’re listening. It’s one thing if you space out while you’re reading, you can go back and believe me, I go back and read paragraphs over and over again. ‘cause I realize, did I just read this and what did it mean?

I think that reading, whether you are listening. Or reading, whether you are an ebook or book-book, is really the object here. Let’s all read people who don’t read end up with administrations like we have now.

There’s a difference. But you start out with the bottom line is, I’m really happy if people are involved with books in any way they can get them.

Jonathan: So I think the issue here really is, are we engaged in a conversation that takes us out of our every day? And the key element about reading, the romance about reading for a kid, right?

Is that the kid gets to be somewhere else with other people and their world is expanded. I think most of the kids, our own and myself included, got involved in reading as a way of being transported.

Marti: No question.

Jonathan: Whether or not we’re listening to the book or reading the book, whatever medium it is, whether or not we are like, you know, our, most of the people in our family are “gotta have the physical book in hand” type readers.

I am an audio book listener, an avid listener, because otherwise I couldn’t possibly read as much as I do. Engaging in that conversation that takes us out of where we are, that expands our ability. The world opens up when we read, but more importantly, our exposure to other people and conversation opens up.

Marti: And I wanna also bring up something that the way you first experience books is your parents or caretakers or grandparents reading to you. So the first experience kids have is they hear it.

Something very sweet about people listening to audio books that reminds them of their childhoods or just the sweetness, the warmth.

The confidence of sitting and listening. So I’m not gonna discount it. I don’t do it. I’m not gonna say I, I haven’t listened to a book since I was two, but I’m not too controlling about holding the book, but it’s a good, so one of the

Jonathan: things I asked Sadie about today. I asked Sadie if Sadie had ever encountered the book, the Latke, That Couldn’t Stop Screaming, which is one of my favorite books outside, of me reading it.

That in fact, it’s one of those books because I have read it to Sadie’s classroom, almost every year. So. I said, so it’s, I would imagine for Sadie, it is impossible to hear the voices in that book without me doing them. Right? So I have a voice for, the pine tree at the end.

That is me imitating the Ents from Lord of the Rings. So I have a voice that I do, and I don’t believe Sadie could probably read that book now without hearing that voice in the same way.

Marti: That’s fine.

Jonathan: Right.

We got our kids into reading through Harry Potter, through the movies, but as soon as they watched the first movie, we required them to read the first and the second book before they could watch the second movie. I am old enough to have read all the Harry Potter books before the movies came out, so I have in my mind the transition between the Harry Potter characters that I imagined when I read the book and then how they transformed when they became, associated with the actors.

Marti: My bottom line is, look, I’ve watched a lot of movies that were derived from books, and often I’ve said the movie was better than the book because it did something that spoke to me. The visual quality, whatever. All I’m saying is if people are listening to books. That’s something I think that after you listen to a book, you might venture into a book-book, but it doesn’t matter right now.

It is a different experience. And I will tell you the thing that we also discuss is that reading.

Jonathan: What did you say about reading Safta?

Marti: It’s you. It’s your connect. It is not. If reading is not a spectator sport, right? So the point about reading for people like me is you gotta get involved. And I know that I close a book or stop reading when all of a sudden I’ve drifted away and I’m not a hundred percent on the page, then it’s time to go watch a Korean drama on Netflix. But once I’m in a, in a book, I am involved. Now listening is a little bit more of a spectator sport.

Jonathan: So, we are quoting Connie Freirich my grandmother. Yes. Who said reading is not a spectator sport. So I have a book and movie combination.

I think I would like to recommend for us to talk about another time.

Marti: Okay. Which is

Jonathan: Everything is Illuminated.

Marti: Oh, that was like such a weird film,

Jonathan: right? So a weird film and a weird book. Okay. I love them both. All right. And despite them being different, I gather. Mom does not.

Jonathan Saffron Foer, but we’ll talk about it another time. But I highly recommend both the movie and the book, and they are vastly different experiences.

Marti: All right, let’s talk about some book titles that we wanna recommend.

Jonathan: I wanted to ask you about one other thing as we go into book titles, because you turned my attention to this, article about the broken reader, in the New York Times book review from November 29th.

It was a guest essay. The essay, if you are looking for it online, is How I Began to Love Reading Again by Jeff Giles so he talked about losing the joy of reading, and you had, a response to him, Mom, what?

Marti: I did? Oh, well, I read it and, you know, my response is that yes, you can lose the joy of reading.

You can become a broken reader. And I just was at a party the other night where one of my neighbors told me that it happened to her. My, answer is go back and find something so easy. So good narrative driven, good character driven, that you don’t have to do a lot of involvement. Which I would say is not the Loneliness of Sonya and Sonny, but, anything that gets you. And so, you know what? I have a story. Can I tell you this story

Jonathan: Please?

Marti: So I was a kid who read a lot. I mean, read a lot,

Jonathan: we know.

Marti: Then, and then all of a sudden I got into comic books. Maybe I was 11 or 10, and I became in love with Archie and Veronica and all of the comic books that were out in the fifties.

Your grandmother, my mother, went into. A panic and this was just a no no. But she was smart enough to know that taking comic books away was not gonna be the answer. And what did she do wisely? And I tell everybody, everyone should have a library card. Everyone should use the libraries. We just got some money refunded to libraries.

She went to the library and said, I have this 10-year-old daughter who’s. Pretty good reader and you know, intelligent and I need books that will engage her. And that’s the word. Wow. Wow. And she came home with three books and that was that. I started reading those books and the comic books went away. And one of the books I read every single year into adulthood, and I have it on my bookshelf and I’ve read it to a couple of the grandchildren.

The whole idea with getting back to reading is find something, should I use the word easy, but engaging?

Jonathan: Well, I am less of a doctrinal, anti comic book, zealot. And

Marti: grandma would not be happy about that.

Jonathan: Well, it’s another medium.

Marti: Yes.

Jonathan: And, and we, we can treat it as another medium and that reading still is engaging in that conversation.

So speaking of that conversation, you have a book you wanna recommend or a book you wanna talk about in particular?

Marti: Other than Mona’s Eyes?

Jonathan: Other than Mona’s Eyes? Well, I have to read.

Marti: because we’re gonna go back in time and we’re gonna go to. Okay. Okay. Maggie O’Farrell. All right.

That’ll be one book. ‘cause the movie is out. A lot of people think it’s the best movie of the year. I loved it. But it’s a beautiful book and the movie is translated, very well. So I think we should go back in time. And that’s a five-year-old book. It was during the.

Pandemic it, it sang to me, it brought me to tears and perfect example. Perfect example is a book about Shakespeare, historical fiction. Not really, because everything about Shakespeare is fiction. We almost know nothing about him. So Maggie O’Farrell just said, I’m gonna take a little of this and a little of that and I’m gonna do a story.

That’s really what we want. And she was playing God, of course. And I give her my permission. So that is a book everyone had. If you missed it in 2020, go back and read that book. It’s gorgeous. Another book, another idea I have is I’d like to once in a while, pick an author that we’ve never talked about and say, just read that author.

So I’m gonna make a list of some like that. I think somebody just did a whole list. I think it was the New York Times, about Kate Atkinson. Everything Kate Atkinson has written almost. I’ve read everything. It’s not all perfect. But it’s great. A lot of it. So I think we should look for authors. You have authors that you love.

I particularly have authors I love and then they disappoint me.

Jonathan: Well, this is, this is the thing, right? So the kids and I spoke about, Robert Jackson Bennett He’s, he’s great, right? He’s written some great things.

He’s also written some duds, so we wouldn’t recommend all of him . I am a particular fan of, an English sci-fi author named Adrian Tchaikovsky, who seemingly writes so much that I can’t keep up. And much of it is beyond stellar, right? He has two sci-fi trilogies that are groundbreaking in their innovation. Similar to N. K. Jemsin, who is also an amazing fantasy sci-fi author, almost all of the stuff I’ve ever read of hers is stunning. Like, pick up N. K. Jemsin if you want,

Marti: I hope our listeners understand that when you talk about sci-fi and fantasy.

It doesn’t work with me, but that we’ve accepted that.

Jonathan: We have accepted that.

Marti: Okay.

Jonathan: On the, my favorite author in the world at the moment is Jill Lepore, who is, you know, a fantastic professor of history who has written two works of history. One retelling American History and her more recent one on the History of the Constitution.

She has a podcast that just came out with, Yascha Mounk talking about, why we should amend the Constitution. I love Jill Lepore. She’s amazing. Haven’t actually read or heard anything of hers that I don’t love. Speaking of sci-fi. Jill Lepore has done, a podcast series on Elon Musk and his background and history and how he misunderstands science fiction.

Marti: Were he only a science fiction character? It would be fine with me. So, no, I just realized that we have a division here. I am primarily a fiction reader, although I read a lot of nonfiction and history and biography, but it’s far outweighed by my fiction reading. And you have other talents. I think that should make, our podcast more interesting because we’re offering a little bit of something to everybody.

We do,

Jonathan: We offer quite a variety. So speaking of variety, we

Marti: love, we both love, the Warmth of Other Suns. And Caste by Isabel Wilkerson.

Jonathan: Well, those books are astounding.

Marti: Important, important

Jonathan: and vital.

Marti: Vital.

Jonathan: So we can talk about a book that you recommended to me, which is the Sweetness of Water.

Marti: Oh, and that was, that was Nathan,

Jonathan: Nathan Harris

Marti: Harris’ first book.

Jonathan: Yes.

Marti: Okay. We have to find that book.

Jonathan: Why did you recommend The Sweetness of Water to me? Why did you love it so much?

Marti: Oh, well, it’s about, Jonathan, I think I read it a while ago, but I think it has a lot to do.

It’s about slavery, right?

Jonathan: So in the wake of, the Civil War, his new book is called Amity.

Marti: Amity, which was really good also. But, I think they’re both terrific, but I thought the Sweetness of Water just left me with such a good feeling.

Jonathan: So it’s about a family.

They think their son has died in the Civil War. And so this white couple who seemed to be relatively well off and don’t own slaves and the protagonist, George is kind of a lost person and then starts a project of clearing the land. He wants to start peanut farming and employs two recently freed African American slaves.

Marti: Okay.

Jonathan: So it’s an interesting setup, you know, and they’re in good,

Marti: good book, right?

Jonathan: It is good. I’m about a third of the way through it,

Marti: Just, there’s a movie on Netflix called Train Dreams.

Jonathan: Okay. What did you think of Train Dreams?

Marti: Well, here’s what I love about some movies. Some movies are like reading a book. And Hamnet was like that, which is why a lot of people have problem with it. And Train Dreams is like that. It’s a beautiful story, but it’s. It’s a story that is like an evolving page by page of a person, and it’s a narrative of about a person.

And I think you could all watch it.

Jonathan: Okay. So. What did you think of the last season of the Diplomat?

Marti: Great.

Jonathan: So why is the Diplomat?

Marti: it’s so crazy. It’s so impossible, and the acting is terrific.

It’s great. I can’t wait for the next whole.

Jonathan: So we also love the Diplomat. We, Ginny and I, so Ginny loves the Diplomat so much that she couldn’t stop herself watching the first season, even though she knew she was gonna watch it again with me.

Marti: I don’t do that, but that’s, that’s extreme. But that’s okay.

Jonathan: And then we both,

Marti: might do that with the Koreans.

Jonathan: We both loved it so much that we were happy to rewatch prior seasons in anticipation of the new season. We even watched it with Sadie.

Marti: Well, it’s terrific series, and they’re both wonderful. They’re all good. The whole plan is great.

Jonathan: So well acted. And I think also this falls into a category that we’ve talked about before of, competence porn.

What the diplomat reminds us of, it’s kind of, the West Wing updated, is that we want to believe that there are people who know what they are doing in positions of power. And what the diplomat highlights is. Wow. There are people who really know what they’re, who are deeply knowledgeable and know what they’re doing and are trying to get the right thing done.

And I think that’s a particular balm for us today.

Marti: Yes. I and certainly that was the West Wing. I will tell you that you said that I had turned to Jeffrey a couple of times. During it when I’d say, I can’t believe how much they know about the way government is working. And it’s such a new experience for us right now.

And, it is a wonderful show. It’s a wonderful show. I wanted to throw in a thing that you and I talked about before, please. And that is the Mary Renault,

Jonathan: Uhhuh.

Marti: Okay. So, there’s a great chain of bookstores in Hudson Valley called Oblong, and I’ve going to the Oblong Bookstore in Rhinebeck for 25 years, and I get their email,

Updates all the time. And they, and we are

Jonathan: not yet sponsored by, by Oblong. So let, let’s let them know that we’re talking about them. We love them even though they are not yet our sponsor.

Marti: They just did something about a new paperback.

Edition of Mary Renault, the Persian boy. She wrote a trilogy. They claim, and I agree that she’s probably one of the best writers of historical fiction. And the Persian Boy is a story, and this is the best one. Although I read the other ones, but it’s way back. I’m talking 25, 30 years, way back, maybe even longer than that.

But the Persian Boy’s about Alexander the Great even though I haven’t read it in 30 years, I would. Tell everybody now that Oblong has just validated my decision that you guys who are listening should read it if you like historical fiction. ‘cause that’s a topic we’re gonna get to later in our podcast.

Jonathan: Well, I think it’s a topic we’re gonna return to on a regular basis. So here. So I am reading the Sweetness of Water now at your recommendation. You know, kind of my deal on this podcast is how many books between podcasts? Can I read that, that Safta recommends so,

Marti: well, I’m not sure I’m gonna recommend the Loneliness of Sonia and Sonny ‘cause it’s long but it’s, Ann Patchett had a quote where she said she wanted a pack a suitcase and get inside this book and just live there. And I can understand that, because the rest of your life closes out while you’re reading this book and you say, what, what? I have to go make dinner. Wait, hold it. You know? So, um. Which I don’t do a lot anyway, so, but anyway, um, so,

Jonathan: so, so do you want, so should I, I should read Mona’s Eyes for next time and we can have an in-depth discussion of Mona’s Eyes.

I should read the Loneliness of Sonia and Sonny.

Marti: No, you should not read Sonia until I finish it. I’m only not quite halfway through

Jonathan: or I should read The Persian Boy for next time.

Marti: Yes. But here’s another thing I wanted to say. About whether we finish books or we don’t finish books.

And we’ve had this discussion over the, we have because in some ways, um,

Jonathan: we’ve had it on the podcast

Marti: we’ve had. Yes. And I went through a very long period of guilt where you had to finish it. Anyway, the Booker came out, the Booker Prize came out, and it’s, it is my, it’s what I hold books up to.

The Booker and Sarah Jessica Parker. Was one of the judges this year.

Jonathan: Right.

Marti: She’s very smart. She has her own publishing company. They read 153 books. I think that’s the number in a very short period of time.

Jonathan: She, we talked about her giving up family life for reading.

Marti: That’s right. That’s right. But then there was a whole article, which I read online, and then I read in the Times both and. She as a newbie, as one of the judges, she was reading a book that was really giving her a hard time. She was well into it, a hundred plus pages, and she called the chairman of the committee, I believe, and said to him, I’m really having a problem with this book.

And he said, oh, put it aside. I already did that. So I thought, oh wow, this is great. If the booker can put books. Marti Reich can put books aside.

Jonathan: Well, and this, this I think is a good place to end as we end enter into this holiday season. We’re gonna list all of these books at the urging of my friend Dawn.

I am going to make sure that all of our links are to independent bookstore links. We wanna support independent bookstores

Marti: and libraries.

Jonathan: And libraries. So all of the links on our website when I update it should be to independent bookstores for all the books that we recommend.

We have. All of these books that we’ve mentioned make great holiday gifts, so feel free to use the links to purchase them or pick them up at libraries. I cannot recommend enough, the apps that come out from libraries. Libby is an amazing app. And you can borrow audio books and kindle books on Libby from the comfort of your own home without actually going to the library and support libraries by that, which is great and also less expensive than buying books.

Marti: I’ll show you. I buy a lot of books. I right now currently have eight books on my St. Agnes library queue, which is a great library on Amsterdam Avenue in the Upper West side. So you can do both. You can do both. And your grandmother was a library person, remember? Well,

Jonathan: and look at that.

We managed to mention both of my grandmothers today, grandma Ida, who was the library matron of honor, who really, inspired us all. And Connie Freirich, who said. Truly reading is not a spectator sport and we encourage everybody to engage in reading. May everyone have a wonderful holiday season.

Hopefully the next time you hear from us, we will do a holiday winter break, special edition from the Upper West Side,

all right. Well thank you everybody for joining us. We look forward to next time and we are grumpy Jews who read and we wish you all a happy holiday season. Happy Hanukkah, which starts this week and, we look forward to our next time. Take care.