Tara's bookshelf: currently-reading en-US Sat, 28 Nov 2015 10:15:52 -0800 60 Tara's bookshelf: currently-reading 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Coming Together, Coming Apart: A Memoir of Heartbreak and Promise in Israel]]> 911932

""Interesting conversation is Israel's most ingratiating commodity, and this is an especially interesting one. To read Coming Together, Coming Apart is to be engaged in an ongoing dialogue with one of Israel's most thoughtful observers--an American who made Israel his home, despite its imperfections and dangers. Gordis's conversational narrative is irresistible.""
--Alan dershowitz, author of The Case for Israel

""Whether describing a walk through Jerusalem in snow, a hike in the desert, or a farewell family drive to the Gaza settlements, Gordis manages to capture the essential details that tell us the larger meaning of our Israeli lives. There is much irony in this book, and also anger, especially against those who unfairly judge Israel in its most desperate and noble times. Most of all, though, this book is the chronicle of a love story--of an immigrant family in Jerusalem falling in love with Israel and, through that love, discovering the strength to cope with life on the front lines of a jihadist war. As a fellow Jerusalemite, I feel a profound debt to Gordis for explaining what it means to raise a family in the middle of a terror zone, and the courage that average Israelis instinctively display in maintaining the pretense of normal life. Those of us who share his passion are fortunate to be so well represented by this book.""
--Yossi Klein Halevi, Foreign Correspondent, The New Republic]]> 272 Daniel Gordis 0471789615 Tara 0 currently-reading 4.09 2006 Coming Together, Coming Apart: A Memoir of Heartbreak and Promise in Israel
author: Daniel Gordis
name: Tara
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/11/28
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]]> Seriously...I'm Kidding 13528510



"I've experienced a whole lot the last few years and I have a lot to share. So I hope that you'll take a moment to sit back, relax and enjoy the words I've put together for you in this book. I think you'll find I've left no stone unturned, no door unopened, no window unbroken, no rug unvacuumed, no ivories untickled. What I'm saying is, let us begin, shall we?"

Seriously... I'm Kidding is a lively, hilarious, and often sweetly poignant look at the life of the much-loved entertainer as she opens up about her personal life, her talk show, and more.




PRAISE FOR Seriously... I'm Kidding
"DeGeneres's amiably oddball riffs on everything from kale to catwalks to Jesus will make fans smile." -- People

"Whatever the topic, DeGeneres's compulsively readable style will appeal to fans old and new." - Publishers Weekly
"Fans will not be disappointed...[DeGeneres's] trademark wit and openness shine through and through." -- Kirkus


span]]> 256 Ellen DeGeneres 0446585041 Tara 0 currently-reading 3.56 2011 Seriously...I'm Kidding
author: Ellen DeGeneres
name: Tara
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/10/24
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Time for Building: The Third Migration, 1880-1920 (Volume 3) (The Jewish People in America)]]> 2358715 Volume III: A Time for Building.

The years between 1880 and 1920 marked the third great migration of Jews tothe U.S.--including more than two million from the Russian empire, Austria-Hungary, and Rumania. "A Time for Building" describes the experiences of Jews who stayed in the large cities of the Northeast and Midwest as well as those who moved to smaller towns in the deep South and the West.

]]> 344 Gerald Sorin 080185122X Tara 0 currently-reading 3.50 1992 A Time for Building: The Third Migration, 1880-1920 (Volume 3) (The Jewish People in America)
author: Gerald Sorin
name: Tara
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/10/09
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Yekl and the Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories of Yiddish New York (Dover Literature: Historical Fiction)]]> 229174

In Yekl, the central problem derives from a social condition: the urgent desire of the hero to become a real American, to be less a "greenhorn"; but the play of events is around an emotional crisis; Yekl no longer loves the wife he left behind, who has now rejoined him in the new land, and who seems to him shockingly European.
In The Imported Bridegroom, the issue is apparently religious, a clash between traditional faith and secularism; but we are left wondering whether philosophy has not become commingled with sociology. Other stories deal with sweatshop life, romance in the slums, a wedding in the ghetto.]]> 240 Abraham Cahan 0486224279 Tara 0 currently-reading 3.41 1970 Yekl and the Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories of Yiddish New York (Dover Literature: Historical Fiction)
author: Abraham Cahan
name: Tara
average rating: 3.41
book published: 1970
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/10/08
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison]]> 18406423
“Nell Bernstein’s book could be for juvenile justice what Rachel Carson’s book was for the environmental movement.� —Andrew Cohen, correspondent, ABC News

When teenagers scuffle during a basketball game, they are typically benched. But when Brian got into it on the court, he and his rival were sprayed in the face at close range with a chemical similar to Mace, denied a shower for twenty-four hours, and then locked in solitary confinement for a month. One in three American children will be arrested by the time they are twenty-three, and many will spend time locked inside horrific detention centers that defy everything we know about what motivates young people to change. In what the San Francisco Chronicle calls “an epic work of investigative journalism that lays bare our nation’s brutal and counterproductive juvenile prisons and is a clarion call to bring our children home,� Nell Bernstein eloquently argues that there is no right way to lock up a child. The very act of isolation denies children the thing that is most essential to their growth and positive relationships with caring adults. Bernstein introduces us to youth across the nation who have suffered violence and psychological torture at the hands of the state. She presents these youths all as fully realized people, not victims. As they describe in their own voices their fight to maintain their humanity and protect their individuality in environments that would deny both, these young people offer a hopeful alternative to the doomed effort to reform a system that should only be dismantled. Interwoven with these heartrending stories is reporting on innovative programs that provide effective alternatives to putting children behind bars. A landmark book, Burning Down the House sparked a national conversation about our inhumane and ineffectual juvenile prisons, and ultimately makes the radical argument that the only path to justice is for state-run detention centers to be abolished completely.]]> 365 Nell Bernstein 1595589562 Tara 0 currently-reading 4.29 2014 Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison
author: Nell Bernstein
name: Tara
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/10/08
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]]> Something of Value 338687 Hardcover 565 Robert Ruark 0241906121 Tara 0 currently-reading 4.34 1955 Something of Value
author: Robert Ruark
name: Tara
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1955
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/07/13
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Les Misérables 24280 1463 Victor Hugo 0451525264 Tara 0 currently-reading 4.19 1862 Les Misérables
author: Victor Hugo
name: Tara
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1862
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/05/28
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> East of Eden 4406
Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.]]> 601 John Steinbeck 0142000655 Tara 0 currently-reading 4.41 1952 East of Eden
author: John Steinbeck
name: Tara
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1952
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/10/17
shelves: currently-reading
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