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Hadassah Magazine review

Happy Purim! I'm celebrating that Hadassah Magazine just posted a wonderful review of FIFTY SHADES OF TALMUD: WHAT THE FIRST RABBIS HAD TO SAY ABOUT YOU-KNOW-WHAT. To whet your appetite here's an excerpt:

This delightful little gem of a book is recommended reading for any Jewish adult who has ever had or wanted to have sex. Non-Jews, too, will be fascinated, if not a bit envious learning about this aspect of our religion. Indeed, "Fifty Shades of Talmud" might be the perfect gift for that non-Jewish son- or daughter-in-law ... Augmented with cartoons and quotes about sex, "Fifty Shades of Talmud" gives us the skinny about "the how, when, where, and with whom" of sexual relations according to our Sages.

review of Margot

Margot by Jillian Cantor

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I thought the premise, that Anne Frank's older sister Margot had managed to survive the camps and then live anonymously in America, was interesting, but the writing didn't quite do the plot justice. Yes, the story moved well between present and past, leaking out small pieces of the past a little at a time and saving the most horrific details for near the end. I also appreciated the romance that tidied everything up in a "happy" ending, and that the author's desire to write a Holocaust story with a "happy" ending. But Jillian Cantor spent so much time on Margot's angst and mental paralysis that I thought the ending got short shrift. Eventually I just skimmed the too-many scenes of Margot suffering panic attacks so I could get to what happened next.



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why two Adar's

Two weeks ago we celebrated Rosh Hodesh for Adar II, the month that Purim is celebrated in years with two Adar’s. One of my Yahoo group members asked me when did we begin with Adar I and Adar II so I decided to take a break from book biz and answer his question.

The need for two Adar’s comes because the Jewish lunar calendar of 12 months of either 29 or 30 days is eleven days shorter than the solar calendar of 365¼ days. This discrepancy means that eventually Pesach would move out of the spring to another season in contradiction to the Torah, which requires it (Ex 13:4, 23:15, 34:18; Deut 16:1) to be a spring festival. The Babylonians, whose months are the same as Jewish ones, merely added an eleven-day festival at year’s end to keep the lunar and solar calendars in sync. But the Jews had to make it complicated by occasionally adding an entire month.

We know from the Talmud that the Rabbis were aware of this problem at least 2000 years ago. At first they decided each Adar whether to add a second Adar by seeing if the barely crop would be ready for harvest after Pesach or if roads to Jerusalem would be passable or too muddy for pilgrims to reach the holy city for the festival. Later they would add an extra Adar if it appeared that otherwise Pesach would come before the spring solstice. Eventually, around the 4th century, the Rabbis determined that by creating leap years [with two Adars] that occur seven times in every 19 years, they could ensure that the Jewish lunar calendar tallied with the solar calendar. This is the same calendar Jews use today.

LA Jewish Journal review

I am so excited and proud that with Fifty Shades of Talmud: What the First Rabbis Had to Say about You-Know-What, my seventh book, the Jewish Journal has not only noticed my efforts but Jonathan Kirsch gave me an outstanding review. Here’s a excerpt from his praise:

"Anton draws on her own deep knowledge of Jewish history and writing, as well as her sly sense of humor, to open our eyes to texts that sound more like they belong in a locker room than in a seminary." The irony that suffuses her book is spoken aloud: "[A]ccording to the Torah … a Jewish man is both obligated to have sex, under certain circumstances, and forbidden to have sex, under other circumstances," she explains. "This means the talmudic rabbis had to use their prodigious intellects to determine those precise circumstances — how, when, where, with whom? Of course, this is hardly the first time that Anton has pushed the envelope on matters of gender in Jewish tradition."

To read the entire review, including a lovely tribute to my illustrator, Richard Shepphard, go to this link.

review of The Periodic Table

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I confess that for me the book started out so slowly that I almost gave up at the beginning. However that first chapter, called Argon after the inert gas, may have been a subterfuge since his deceased ancestors were indeed just that. But I had been asked to review it because I was a writer who had worked years as a chemist, so I read on. I was increasingly drawn in by his stories and grew more impressed by his prose. By page 66 I found his splendid writing so much better than anything I could produce that it was both painful and awe-inspiring for me to read. Levi's memoir divides roughly in half with the first part taking place before his internment in Auschwitz and the second after, but the two sections are divided with a couple of little fantasy stories that were delightfully different.

The second part went faster than the first and I recognized I was reading the work of a master. Each chapter was better written, each story more compelling, than the one before it as before my eyes his craft improved. The last two chapters [spoiler alert] bring us to the climax, when his business dealings force him to reconnect with a German factory owner for whom Levi performed slave labor. The final chapter is of such sublime beauty, and the last sentence so wonderful, that I finished the book awestruck. I would give this book 6 stars if I could.



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Goodreads giveaway

In one important way, things are different for this March release than for my novels, all of which had late summer pub dates. Normally Jewish books come out in the fall, to take advantage of bookstores’ special holiday tables for High Holy Days and Hanukah, as well as the many book festivals during Jewish Book Month in November. Unfortunately the trend towards e-books and buying print books online has greatly lessened the influence of these time-honored efforts to promote Jewish books, but enough on that sad subject.

One of the good things about March release is that many Jewish organizations plan their entire next year’s calendar [i.e. September through June] the previous spring. Thus my e-blasts landed in their emails before their schedule was complete, often before they’d even started planning next year’s programs. This worked particularly well for Women of Reform Judaism [WRJ: today’s name for what we used to call temple Sisterhoods], who are just now planning for their district conventions in the fall. Good news - I got invited to speak at the majority of them; bad news – they almost all take place over the same two weekends in late October and early November, making it impossible for me to accept every invitation. Following the Golden Rule [whoever has the gold, rules], I’ll be speaking at Atlantic district meeting in NJ because they had a budget to pay for my airfare and didn’t mind if I spoke at other venues in the area while I was there. So any Jewish group on the East Coast who wants me should contact me asap to get in on the tour.

One last thing. Most of you know I’m on Goodreads because you see the occasional boo reviews I post for them. Well, Goodreads also hosts book Giveaways and I’m currently giving away 10 copies of Fifty Shades of Talmud. Goodreads members can enter between now and April 10, just one entry per person. This is for a print copy only; if you want an e-book you’ll just have to plunk down three bucks on Amazon.

book progress speeding up

Book progress is moving swiftly. I’ve gotten a great response to my e-blasts: not only congratulations and a bunch of pre-orders, but quite a few invitations to speak at all sorts of Jewish venues [more on this in my next post]. I’ve also arranged for ads in Hadassah and Moment Magazines’ special book guides, and I plan to place an ad in the Assoc of Jewish Libraries’ conference booklet. Their annual conference is in June, and while I’ve attended some in the past, unfortunately this year’s is in South Carolina, too far away for my budget.

My website is getting new content several times a week since I try to update my speaking schedule as new dates are finalized. I finished a press release and author Q&A, both of which should be posted soon. I also consolidated the various blurbs I received, which should expand as more reviews come in. You can find out who wrote blurbs by buying Fifty Shades of Talmud or by clicking on the book’s website review page. Also on the website is an excerpt that consists of the preface and first chapter. For those on Goodreads [and if you’re not, what are you waiting for?], the excerpt is there too. Speaking of Goodreads, a Giveaway starts on March 10 for some free copies.

There is still lots to do, especially in replying to and coordinating requests for speaking gigs. My next task is approaching Jewish bloggers to see if they’d like to interview me or let me do a guest post for them. I hope your next task will be checking all the new info on the FIFTY SHADES OF TALMUD website

more Fifty Shades tasks

Shabbat shalom. A week after all the e-blasts went out, I feel like I’m finally making a dent in my various PR chores. I’ve sent out eight ARC’s [Advance Reader Copy] to reviewers who requested them. I’ve started the yearlong task of wishing Facebook friends “Happy Birthday” every day, using my e-blast as the photo. I set up a Facebook Event for the publication date, but I haven’t invited anyone yet because FB keeps rejecting my invitations for being “sent too fast.”

Good news first. The final cover and interior copy files for the print paperback went to the short-run digital printer early this week, so books will ship to the distributor by March 9 and hopefully arrive there by March 16 [I should also get my author copies by then]. Then off they go to Amazon and other vendors, just in time for the Purim pub date. E-books are an entirely different matter, which I will blog about later once I understand that system.

Not so good news. Not everyone who originally asked for a copy to blurb ended up giving me one. Some never replied that they’d received it, some found that they didn’t have time to read it, and one didn’t feel comfortable writing a blurb. Unfortunately, the ones who did give me blurbs were all men. Fortunately we had room for two pages of praise, so we used one page for the men reviewing Fifty Shades of Talmud and the second for women who reviewed my previous work, Rav Hisda’s Daughter. And if/when we get some nice media reviews, we can add them in later printings.

review of Women Know Everything

Women Know Everything! by Karen Weekes

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a book I will never stop reading, because I'll never know when I might need a quote for a certain occasion. Some of the 3241 quotes are funny, some are serious, and some disagree with others. A true cross-section of women's opinions from different ethnicities and centuries on a myriad of subjects. I particularly appreciated that while the quotes are arranged alphabetically by subject, there is an index of women quoted in the back. Also each attribution includes the woman's birth & death dates, her occupation and country of origin.

Beware, readers - once you start perusing this book, thinking you'll only check one subject, the next thing you know it'll be a hour later and you're on to a whole new set of subjects.



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