Thanksgiving weekend is over and peace has descended on our house again after four days of family inundation from five grandchildren ranging in age from 6 months to almost 10 years old and their four parents. It is truly great having them all visiting at the same time, especially seeing the little ones interact with their cousins, but it is also exhausting. Especially when the festivities include a birthday brunch for three generations of extended family.
A pleasant surprise for me was learning, via Talkwalker Alerts, that the Los Angeles Jewish Journal had chosen "Fifty Shades of Talmud" as one of four books recommended for holiday gift giving. Even more impressive considering that the three other books were by Michael Chabon, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Samuel M. Katz. To read more about what I, and the three male authors, wrote, click on the link.
Talkwalker Alerts had another nice surprise for me, with an article in the V.I. [Virgin Island] Source about my upcoming scholar weekend. They wrote: The Hebrew Congregation of St. Thomas welcomes the entire St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. John community to a special weekend with world famous author Maggie Anton. Maggie Anton is the author of the award-winning “Rashi’s Daughters” trilogy, and she will be discussing her most recent work, “Fifty Shades of Talmud: What the First Rabbis Had to Say about You-Know-What.” All are welcome to the Friday evening service and book signing with Anton set for 6:30 p.m., Dec. 2, in the historic synagogue, and are also invited to the study session planned for 10 a.m., Dec. 3, in the Lilienfeld House up the street. For more information about this visiting scholar and the activities of the weekend, contact the synagogue at info@synagogue.vi or 774-4312.
Yes, in three days my husband and I will board a flight to St. Thomas where I’ll be the scholar next weekend. And after that, we’ll stay another few days for a well-earned vacation on this island paradise–just the two of us–to celebrate our 46 years of marriage.
As many authors, but few readers, know, Amazon has become stricter about reviews lately. For me, lately means the time between my big book tour after Enchantress came out [Fall 2014 – Spring 2015] and Fifty Shades of Talmud’s pub date in March 2016. I was told that Amazon links certain promotions to various numbers of good reviews, but have never come across the exact rules. Which was no surprise since Amazon is a world unto itself. Still, since it couldn’t hurt, I encouraged friends and fans who buy copies to post nice reviews there.
To my dismay, I started hearing from fans that their reviews had been rejected or merely never shown up. A bit of sleuthing revealed that, to maintain the integrity of their review process, Amazon has rules for who could post reviews. No family members or friends of authors were allowed, although how Amazon ascertained this info was not revealed. The reviewer had to have an Amazon account [well, duh] and paid reviews were not only forbidden, but Amazon could ban folks who tried to post them. I learned that there is an entire cottage industry selling fake reviews, both 5-stars to promote authors’ own books and 1-stars to slam competitors.
I still try to remember at my speaking gigs to ask readers to post Amazon reviews that aren’t too much like ones already on there. But I strongly suspect that the reviews being rejected are more likely to praise my book than condemn it. To learn more about Amazon’s most recent review rules, read this article. And if you’ve spent more than $50 on Amazon [and who hasn’t?] and liked "Fifty Shades of Talmud", please write a nice review of it for them.
For more about Amazon's new rules, click on the link.
For everyone who didn't get a chance to see/hear me in action on my East Coast book tour that ended today, a consolation is that Amazon has FIFTY SHADES OF TALMUD: WHAT THE FIRST RABBIS HAD TO SAY ABOUT YOU-KNOW-WHAT on sale for $3.99.
I’ve been so busy on book tour that I’ve had little time to keep up with the news – which I’m thankful. Thus, I didn’t learn about singer, songwriter Leonard Cohen’s death until Friday night at Shabbat services in a Reform synagogue in Rye when the cantor memorialized him by singing his Hallelujah. I mainly knew of Leonard Cohen, grandson of an Orthodox rabbi and Talmudic scholr, because our cantor regularly does Cohen’s Who by Fire on Yom Kippur. Released in 1974, five weeks before Rosh Hashanah, the song, composed in response to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, drew its title and theme directly from the High Holy Day liturgy.
Saturday morning found me at another Reform synagogue, this time in Brooklyn, where again there was a Leonard Cohen song. This morning I’m in Great Neck, where my host and I are listening to The Essential Leonard Cohen while we work on our computers. As the music plays, I am surprised to discover that I am familiar with most of the songs, although I never knew they were all his compositions. Unable to get them out of my head, I decided to devote this blog post to him.
Thus I searched the Internet and was awed to read that at a press event in mid-October, shortly after Yom Kippur, Cohen talked about using "Hineni" in the lyrics of his new album's title song. Lyrics include “Magnified and sanctified be Thy holy name,” a quote directly from the Kaddish, and “Hineni, hineni, I’m ready my Lord,” Mr. Cohen quotes in Hebrew and English from the story of the Binding of Isaac, one of Rosh Hashanah’s Torah readings. I can’t help but believe that Leonard Cohen was somehow anticipating his death, which came three weeks later.
To read his obituary in the New York Times , just click on the link. Another from Rolling Stone
Today starts the final week of my East Coast book tour. I seem to have brought California weather with me, because nearly every day has been mild and sunny. Fifty Shades of Talmud is selling well, and because I now take credit cards via my iPhone, people are buying my novels too. I haven’t spent the night in a hotel yet, preferring home hospitality. If I have friends nearby, I stay with them, but mostly I stay with strangers. I’ve met some wonderful and interesting people on my travels this way. And because my venues want to put me up in a place they won’t be ashamed of, I’ve stayed in some amazing homes.
Typically I stay with empty nesters in a bedroom one of their children previously occupied. Occasionally I stay with machers who provide an entire guest suite. Thus I’ve become an expert on guest rooms, and so I’m devoting this blog post to the qualities of an ideal guest room. Of course I rarely find all these amenities at one home, but here they are, more or less in order of importance:
1] comfortable bed with choice of pillows firmness
2] quiet location, although I bring earplugs just in case
3] chair or second bed to sit on
4] my own bathroom, either in suite or nearby
5] sufficient lighting so I find things in my suitcase at night
6] bedside table, especially with clock and reading lamp
7] sufficient convenient outlets to charge my phone or computer
8] mirror and desk area would be nice
9] ground floor room so there is no shlepping luggage up stairs
9] last but not least, working wifi
I have never been one for video games, especially the kind you see people playing on their phones, unaware of the world around them. But since I replaced my ancient iPhone 3 with an iPhone 6 so I could take credit card payments while on book tour, I confess that I now play Pokemon Go nearly every day. I started mainly because my daughter and grandsons were enjoying it so much. They showed me the basics, which involve collecting various Pokemon [short for pocket monster] that appear as the player walks around outside. There are several hundred unique Pokemon, each found in its own habitat. Certain kinds inhabit parks, others desert/sandy areas, parking lots, shopping malls, forests, or big cities. Water Pokemon spawn near the beach or a lake, Ghost Pokemon near cemeteries, and Cold Pokemon when it’s snowing. Some are common in certain parts of the world and rare elsewhere, making it difficult to collect them all.
The more Pokemon I capture, the more points I get. But Pokemon Go is called that because players have to go out to do this, and we get additional points for how far we walk. The game uses GPS and Google Maps to show me where I’m walking and keeps track of how far I’ve gone. Amazingly, I’ve walked almost 200 km in pursuit of these creatures. One of the things I look forward to in my travels is the new Pokemon I’ll encounter.
Now that I’ve been on the East Coast 10 days, I have indeed seen, and captured, some Pokemon I’ve never found back in LA. On Halloween on the National Mall in DC, I saw every type of Ghost Pokemon. Here where I’m staying in Port Liberte, a peninsula surrounded by the Hudson River, there are quite a few Water Pokemon we don’t have near the beach in LA. And I’ve been doing more walking than I would do normally, which is a very good thing considering all the excellent meals and high-carb snacks I’ve ingested.