Bloom Books

Four romantic stories come together in "The Bouquet," a novel of love begun at a wedding celebration where the bride accidentally tosses her bouquet into the ceiling fan where it is chopped into four pieces and thrown to exactly the people who need it most.

****"Flowers By Felicity" is Janet Lee Barton's tale of the florist who created the notorious bouquet. David, the bride's brother, was photographing the event for the local paper. Now he has published the photos that may damage Felicity's business. Will he be able to make it up to his sister's friend? Especially since he is learning to love her.

***Diann Hunt's "Petals of Promise" finds Konni, a widow who is afraid to lose love again, holding a few petals from the demolished bouquet. She literally runs into Rick, a new man in town, who is a confirmed bachelor. He refuses to wed because he thinks he will be a terrible husband due to the lack of a positive role model in his life. Can these two get over their past hurts and find romance with each other?

***"Rose In Bloom" is Sandra Petit's story of Rose, the caterer friend of the bride who made the wedding cake and the best man, Lucas, the one who (through a comical circumstance) wound up smashing the cake and dislocating Rose's shoulder. He's ready for a relationship, but she's trying to start her business. Can love and forgiveness take root in this charming tale?

****"Flowers for a Friend" by Gail Stattler tells of the flowers that landed on Geoff's head. He innocently gives them to a little girl he knows - how can that cause romantic entanglements he doesn't want? But Jenni has a big sister, Clarissa. Will their relationship grow? Or will they deny what they both feel for each other?

It's always been my belief that whoever catches the wedding bouquet is the next to be married. Not necessarily so. Here it symbolizes a hope that love will sail into the life of the person catching it. At Abby's wedding, her nosegay bouquet gets thrown up into the ceiling fan and is torn apart into four pieces. They sail far across the throng of husband-hungry women guests and the four chosen by fate to have a piece don't exactly believe in love for themselves, only others. Love is the last thing they are looking or wishing for; but, who knows where the spirling numbers will fly or where they will land.

Into each life, love of some form does happen. It may not be the love of your life or the person you could love with all your heart. Oftimes we have to settle for second best and feel angry and unfulfilled for the rest of our lives. Sometimes, if fate is good, we will find the real love again before we die, but not usually. Konnie was a broken hearted widow who had vowed never to love again. After all, love hurts; and when you lose a loved one by death, it is twice fold. She didn't think she could ever go through that again. But fate steps in, and magic occurs.

Geoff is embarrassed when a piece of the bouquet lands in his hand and he quickly gives it to an admiring little girl. After all, he is the handsomest man at the wedding which is not his, and all glances are his way because of his good looks and charming ways. The girl who is too small to have a crush on the nice man hands it to her big sister who has loved him from afar for a long time. He has to acquiese since, after all, he did give the magic to her on a platter.

Rosie had baked the wedding cake and a clumsy groomsman, not Geoff, had crushed it to her despair. It did not damper the love and good wishes in the group of well-wishers for the now wedded couple. She now has a chance at love, which has eluded her for so long. She was standing in the right place at the right time. Lucky Rosie.

Felicity, on the other hand, is the florist who had designed the bouquet of gardenias, babies breath, and white roses and dismayed to see it torn apart and flown to the wind, so to speak. She is love-worn, watching others get married and she is never the lovely bride. Is it true that all brides are beautiful? That's what I was told by Christine when she married my son Geoff. Felicity finds that she indeed has a chance at love, at last.

Is it true that God can use fragmented flowers to plant seeds of love in 'fallow' hearts? I have a shirt with the words "Come Grow With Me" with a blue watering can and tulips with daises. Another says, "Grow Where You Are Planted." God has a plan for all of us, not to be alone and disspirited by a live without love. We may not always get the one we love the most, but please don't just love the one you're with. That is self-defeating.

This combined book used FLOWERS BY FELICITY by Janet Lee Barton, FLOWERS FOR A FRIEND by Gail Sattler, PETALS OF PROMISE by Diann Hunt, and ROSE IN BLOOM by Sandra Petit -- all combined to make this unusual love story about an unlikely occurrence at any wedding. Wish it had happened at mine; I had only one person to throw my gardenia to, the bridesmaid, as I had a small wedding. I lost touch with Colleen, so I don't know whether it worked or not as I had moved far away to Troy, Alabama, for a year after June 4, only to return 40 years later to a strange homeland where no one knows me. I met a woman on the bus who moved away to Queens, New York, to return and have the same fate -- no one knows or cares about the young you anymore. It's as if you were in an alien land, and not your hometown.

Fate plays tricks on all of us, whether we want it to or not. I was sure I would find my first love when I returned. He had other plans -- never to return, and it simply broke my heart.

In order to fully understand and appreciate Dolly City, it is helpful to first read Castel-Bloom's more traditionally structured and written Human Parts. With Human Parts as a reading guide, Dolly City becomes a bit more intelligible for the reader unready for Castel-Bloom's flights of surreal fancy. Castel-Bloom is fixated with the sense of insecurity in the lives of individual people in the State of Israel, and Dolly City is the extreme, deranged expression of this. Nothing is taken for granted in Dolly City, both the novel and the fictitious city of the same name. Anything can happen at any time, and the characters are both unprepared for a response, have the wrong response, no response at all, or overreact to life's demands. So this work can be a jarring novel to read: there is an inescapable sense of dread on each page, of infinite possibility, and as if live itself is not a given anymore, but derangement heading straight to death.

A kinetic and grotesque trip, which I found initially engaging but gradually alienating and dulling, as more and more I felt it was a picaresque exercise in stream-of-consciousness writing. Fans of J.Joyce's ULYSSES will be interested but perhaps like me driven to despair if they seek ultimate coherence in the thought-riot. Certainly an interesting and extreme permutation of what James Wood has now coined as Hysterical Realism, this being Hystrionic Surrealism.

Harold Bloom has been one of the most respected literary critics of the 20th century. This book is not a capitalization of the life of Hemingway (as declared in a prior review), it is unique insight into the writer and the man. The edited articles composing the book were created by some of the most respected scholars, journalists, critics, and authors of his era. Mr. Bloom has culled through thousands of written pieces and has selected the best works to best exemplifiy Hemingway, not only in his accomplishments and works, but also his thought process and methodology to create his masterpieces. Some of these essays are critical reviews, not just kudos in praise of Hemingway's works. Although I have been a Hemingway fan for over 50 years, I discovered in this book many new insights into one of the greatest and respected authors of the 20th Century.

One of the least notable attempts to capitalize on...100th anniversary>

I have every victoria book ever published and this is the only one I did not like. Where were the flowers. I have a passion for anything with flowers on it, especially roses on fabric.I ordered this as part of an introductory offer to a book club and boy was I disappointed. There were hardly any flowers in the book. If you like the rest of victorias book you will not like this one. It was almost as if it were published by someone else.

This book is beautifully presented and allows the reader to journey through an indoor garden without the maintenance and care of living plants. There's useful information on china patterns that feature floral motifs and large photographs of colorful interiors utilizing various wall coverings.

This is by no means a review. I find Bloom stimulating in all his various books even if frequently obscure and discursive. He incites me to want to know more. This book is no different. Don't know much about Kabbalah? Well, don't look here for answers (Bloom himself encourages you to seek out Gershom Sholem's work in the field). Instead you'll find insights into reading and interpretation, for this is what Bloom's entire oeuvre is really about--how we discover meaning in all aspects of human endeavor.

This book is a wonderful tease on one hand--name-dropping in an esoteric field is always interesting and makes me want to search out those "formidable" authors--and an attempt to fill in some of the gaps in Bloom's readers' knowledge--he's been talking Kabbalah from the beginning and in this dedicated volume you begin to really understand its hold on him.

Short and sweet and worth the effort.

This short little book contains three essays that move from the exoterically esoteric to the downright incomprehensible. Like Kabbalah itself is often assumed to be, Bloom's thinking is like a Gnostic nugget - albeit without the imaginative cosmology that Gnosticism historically had - where the first essay is like the outside of the pomegranate, the second essay like the layer around the pomegranate and the third essay the actual fruit. Kabbalah and Criticism is set within a Scholem-esque historiography but with one thing missing: the Messiah which, in Bloom's work, never appears - indeed, one can wonder whether or not the Messiah is ever coming at all! The actual fruit turns out to be empty and emptying; rather than taking us anywhere, Kabbalah and Criticism simply leaves the reader hanging.

The first essay is an explanation of the major themes in Jewish mysticism/Kabbalah, focusing primarily on its Zoharic (13th century) and Lurianic (15th & 16th century) manifestations. Kabbalah is usually considered fairly esoteric; ironically, this essay is the most exoteric in the entire book. It is clear that Bloom has digested the writings of Gershom Scholem - the brilliant mind who first brought Jewish mysticism into academic credibility in the 20th century - and it is from within this Scholem-esque framework that Bloom operates.

In the second essay, however, Kabbalah is clearly shown to not actually be a map of the world, but a type of two-dimensional signifier in which the various interactions between the the Ten Sefirot exist not as signifiers pointing to the reality of God, but as signifiers pointing to the fact that texts themselves interact with each other and that the interaction is not found first and foremost in the texts or the Sefirot, but in the space between them. Thus Kabbalah, rather than speaking of God, becomes a springboard for a literary theory. Why it is that Kabbalah ought to be this springboard is never explained; given the commodification of all things Kabbalistic today, it seems that Bloom is no different, for Kabbalah is entirely unnecessary for his theory - it's just a useful heuristic, and nothing more.

The heuristic, furthermore, never actually serves to take the reader to any point of understanding. Thus, for Bloom, Kabbalah is a series of symbols that interact within one another ad infinitum but because they are never anything more than that, nothing ever arrives in Kabbalah any more than in any text. In short, Bloom's theory is entirely devoid of a Messiah: just as the symbols symbolize unendingly in Bloom's Kabbalistic maze (something that Scholem would have found quite hard to accept), so too does the text itself continually exist in need of re-reading - or, as Bloom prefers, *mis-reading*. Literature is a series of misreadings, a confusion of interpretation with text by insisting that all interpretation *is* the text that is being interpreted. By the time Bloom gets to this essay, he is so far from the Jewish mysticism that he began with that it becomes quite clear that Kabbalah is really quite superfluous to his whole theory. He *mis-reads* Kabbalah and, in doing so, is only capable of arguing that interpretation - mis-reading - justifies itself.

If one is interested in Harold Bloom, the back of this book claims that "Kabbalah and Criticism may justly be regarded as the cardinal work in Harold Bloom's enterprise." I honestly can't understand why anyone would bother, though, for its Kabbalism is vacuous and its criticism vapid. Bloom is a brilliant guy, but because his Kabbalism lacks the possibility of a Messiah - a reading in which the text and the reader meet in a moment of deep meaning - Kabbalah and Criticism simply wanders in a desert of thin symbols lifted out of their historical context and it therefore begins to look not just like the Messiah will never come, but that there is no historical world for him to even come to.

This a quick and fun read on Orlando. I enjoyed the book. It had plenty of good info on him and pictures. I highly recommend this book to Orlando fans.

That's how I got this book--my family knowing I'm an Orlando Bloom fan, they bought this book when they saw it in Safeway. I thought it was hilarious, but decided it would make an interesting read.

I know a lot of the material is accurate, but it's not really anything you couldn't learn by just going to a fan site on the Net. The author seems to try to spice up the "biography" with some dialogue and insights into actor's mind. Though he states in the beginning that he did this all in Orlando's character, it's a bit distracting, not to mention that sometimes it's a bit difficult to tell what really happened.

I was most insulted at the book's incorrect information. It may just be because I'm a huge Lord of the Rings fan (books and movie), but it clearly shows that the book was not very well edited, probably a rush job to get it out in circulation quickly. The name "Gollum" is spelled as "Golem", there are some minor plot mistakes, and pictures from the various LotR movies are very mistakenly captioned. (A picture from Aragorn's coronation labelled "Fellowship of the Ring"??)

I would say you should only buy this book if you're a big Orlando Bloom fan and want to have all the merchandise you can get your hands on. If not, just go and read a biography on a site like The Orlando Bloom Files. It basically says all you want to know in a nutshell, without the extra little flourishes. Another reason to buy this book is if you want to know more about Orlando's career before he got into movies--the book at least has some interesting info there. This book may have been a bit disappointing, but it was amusing to read.

This is a moderately interesting story with sympathetic characters, and Bloom offers important historical information about the time of the Nazi occupation and aftermath as it affected a particular set of individuals. However, the unnecessary dialogue, loading of character background and atrocious punctuation ruin the overall effect.

The Stolen Art Triangles held my interest from the very beginning and the book got stronger as I went along. I couldn't wait to find out how it was going to end. The research that went into the historic parts of the book was obviously very extensive. It remainded me, in many parts, of things I already knew, but other parts provided me with information of which I was not aware, but found very interesting. The characters were all life-like, and I learned to care for all the major characters. In my mind, I cheered the heros and hissed the villains. As you can tell, I enjoyed the book very much and am recommending it to all my friends.

This book is autobiographical...it is a series of stories about the author as she was growing up in China during the cultural revolution. It is beautifully written and transcends any cultural differences. You will be filled with both joy and sorrow as you read her wonderful tales.

I initially was interested in this because it was non-fiction about the Cultural Revolution. I had recently seen a photograph art exhibit about the Cultural Revolution and realized I hadn't read anything about China, let alone this dark time of Mao. So I was looking for information and experiences that could help clue me in. Perhaps that was why I didn't find all that I was looking for in this book.

It is more a collection of stories about her family and tradition and magic from childhood that happens to be set in the Cultural Revolution when the author was growing up. Chronologically it jumps around so you meet family members at different times and then they get re-described in later stories. You see them die in one story and then they are alive again in the next one. It is a bit confusing. The author does nicely describe the scene for you though, for me, perhaps a bit too much language was used on this and not enough in giving the reader real, useful information. I am still looking for other non-fiction on Cultural Revolution to give me a better picture, but this one did teach me some things and gave me a bit of perspective.

Nataile loses her boyfriend who finds out she had cheated on him, then gets into drugs and you find out she has Anorexia, she loses her job, as you can tell her world is fallings little by little infront of her eyes...

i love anna maxted, and this is truly one of her best books!

I liked the book, but I didn't love it. I have read the BJD's, and they were better in the chick lit category. However, Anna Maxted is a good writer who got off the path with this one.

Eveything everyone has said about this book is true to some extent. It's not her best, obviously, because so many were upset by what is not mediocre writing in this one. So she must have written a much better book. This one introduced and describes Natalie, who is one confused, passive-aggressive A-type individual. Underneath all that is said, what isn't said is that Natalie has managed to get what she wants for the most part, whether it be men, jobs, or friends. She's a clean freak, an anorexic-bulemic?, and a pain when she isn't being scarily efficient. In other words, a complete contradiction. One minute she's cleaning like a demon, the next she's snorting coke like a fool, then she's yelling at her mother and throwing potatoes on the wall. There are a lot of plot points which could have been explored in this book, but weren't. For instance, her mother's weight directly correlating to Natalie's lack thereof. Or the father's absence in her life leading to her cluelessness and victim mentality in regard to men. Or her brother's intimidation, or Babs as a crutch. I could go on and on. The ending should have been in the first half of the book. The trip to Australia, in my opinion, shouldn't have been mentioned if we weren't going to get to meet the niece and her mother except through telephone dialogue.

This was my first time reading anything by this author, and based only on previews of her first book, which I couldn't find, I bought this one, and the next two, which I have yet to read. I hope they are better, at least as good as her first, since all of you have said it was so good. I hope not to be disappointed again.

This book was a major disappointment. It was my first excusion into chick lit and I can safely say I've read enough. The first rule of a good story is that it should make the reader care about the central characters, and I didn't. Or I should say I despised Natalie Miller, found her self-absorbed and annoying, and would not root for her in any instance. I liked her best friend Babs much more, and she is sketched at an arm's distance. Natalie is anorexic, insecure, disloyal, unsure of any decision she makes and totally worthless as a friend. We learn only halfway through the book that she has an eating disorder; which the author can't decide is a central plot twist or not. Natalie is surrounded by men and admirers that all seem to be missing something, but they are all pining over her in one shape or another (Andy, Robbie, Chris, Simon...) and it all seems implausaible given the short shrift she begins that book with (Saul). The story twists are totally predictable, the seductions seem implausible, and she can't seem to commit to any feelings or to one person. She hasn't a clue that Chris is using her, thought it's drawn as plain as day. I wouldn't have her as a friend, and I did not care a fig for what became of her. I bailed out 3/4 into the book and I am sorry I wasted that much time.

And why is Natalie always "bleating" or "squeaking" her responses? ("'I don't' I bleated" or "'I can't' I squeaked.") There must be 2-3 bleats or squeaks per page and they drove me crazy. Then all the other characters start bleating too. Lack of originality and trying too hard to be funny, and failing. This book fell flatter than a ballet slipper.

One of the worst chick-lit stories I've read in a while. Natalie, the main character, is incredibly messed up with food issues and anxiety about being left behind. You find yourself working through her issues with her and not understanding where she is coming from. It seems like she is developed in such a poor manner that you don't even understand what her deal is. I would not recommend anyone reading this.

Running in Heels: A Novel by Anna Maxted is my personal favorite. Seems like everyone despises this novel but I absolutely adore it. The main character Natalie suffers from anorexia, has lost her best friend and is falling in love with her best friend's brother, Andy. Natalie has issues with food, her brother, her parents and everyone in between. I love Maxted's writing, she's a hoot and breaks your heart at the same time. I highly recommend Running in Heels, it won't cure cancer but it will likely heat your summer up. Enjoy!

Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America
This book describes the author's family move from the sophistication of life in San Francisco to Iowa in 1993. The author's acceptance of a position as professor of journalism at the University of Iowa necessitated not only a change of location, but also of world view and life style, as witnessed by his shock in reading a newspaper review of the better sea food retaurants in the Cedar Rapids area and finding Red Lobster and Long John Silver listed.

I purchased the book because like so many, I was horrified at the multi-million dollar raid performed by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) at the Postville Agriprocessor's meat packing plant in May 2008. The raid netted some 400 workers, principally of Guatemalan and Mexican descent, working at the plant that day. I wanted to know the history of the town and the plant that brought these people to this small Iowa town, to a factory operated by Hasidic (ultra-orthodox) Jews. At the time of the raid, the plant provided nearly 60% of the kosher beef, lamb and poultry in the US.

In an often humorous, but always serious and evenhanded way, Bloom tells the tale of the dying town that was ressurected by the opening of the kosher operations at the abandoned meat packing plant there. The creation of more than 400 jobs, even though the jobs did not attract workers from Iowa, was still an economic miracle for Postville, but as Bloom explains, the blessing was also a curse, as it meant the the Hasidic Jews had accomlished that which the town and state had not. It also meant that the Jews were the wealthy people in town who effectively called the shots on much of town life. Finally, there were the cultural and religious differences that had never quite been over come.

Bloom's tells this story of culture clash from several perspectives, and the people, real people (although some are re-named from their actual names) are living, breathing people, not stereotypes. One one level, Bloomn's book is a history of ecomic and culture clash in a small, rural town. On another level, possibly not intended, the book is a tale of globalization, and the shifting role of the US in a global economy. The tensions and clashes in the book seem to parallel or foretell the rise of globalism and and its clashes with rising nationalism and nativism.

The book is a valuable and comfortable read on its own. As we learn more and more of the social and economic paralysis now besetting Postville (not to mention the cost to tax payers for the raid itself), I believe Bloom's book will be a valuable tool in defining a basline and illuminaitng the very intangible sociological elements of the town's existence.

This book should be read as a book that does not reflect the people it is written about but instead reflects the politics and outlook of the academic who wrote it and his secular world view. For him he is the anthropologist discovering this world of Hasidim and Iowans and as a good secular person he must judge who is 'right' and who is 'wrong'. SO he decides that the nasty Hasidim are evil because they do not intermarry, they do not mix and they, gasp, do not celebrate Christmass. One wonders why it is they, the minority of 150, who are expected to assimilate and confrom to the majority? Is it because they are the 'other' or the foreigners. It is interesting, in the secular academic world no one forces foreigners to assimilate. Instead Cinco de Mayo is celebrated. So why isnt the diversity of the Hasidim celebrated. When the locals insult people by calling them 'Jew lover' the author laughs at this as if this racist insult is a joke, which means the book itself may border on anti-semitism. The author insinuates that the Hasidim keep apart for 'racial' reasons, which is patently untrue. They also keep apart for religious reasons, sort of like the Amish.

The insinuation here is that the Hasidim are not American because they don't confrom and don't fit in and arn't friendly enough. But perhaps the author missed what being American is all about. America is about being who you are and at the same time being a patriot. Most Hasidim are the most patriotic people. They may not celebrate Christmass, but they wave the American flag. That is what being American about. Becoming an Iowan doesn't make someone American, just as Iowans are not forced to become like New Yorkers if they move to New York. If they moved to Crown Heights, the land of the Hasids, no one would expect them to become Hasidim.

Seth J. Frantzman

Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America looks at how tensions gradually erupt between locals and hasidic Jews who opened a kosher slaughterhouse in a rural farming community. This book was written by a secular Jew from the west coast who had moved to Iowa to take a job as a university professor.

While the author certainly has issues of his own (he actually cites the scoutmaster mentioning Jesus Christ at his sons Boy Scouts meeting as an example of anti-semitism he has experienced in Iowa!) I don't think the most rabid Jew hater could have done a better job of making the Hasidic Lubavitchers look bad. After being taken under the wing of Lubavitchers who wanted to convert him, as a secular Jew, to their Hasidic sect, Bloom in the end exposes the Lubavitchers worst traits. From their petty haggling over prices in local stores over the smallest of items, to their racist attitudes towards "goyim" and "schwartzs", while simultaneously accusing anybody who disagrees with them of being anti-semitic, to their refusal to pay debts and honor contracts in business dealings and other bullying business practices, their importation of illegal immigrant riff raff to this once homogenous crime free town to cheapen their labor costs, even their cruel way of slaughtering animals to make the meat kosher are brought to light. All of these factors, along with the Hasidic Jews refusal to participate in the community other than by using it to make themselves rich, gradually over a period of time caused major tensions between multi-generational locals and the Lubavitchers. On the other hand he does show some of their admirable traits also, like being family oriented and their obsessivly strict adherence to preserving their own culture and customs.

Overall this a very good book that I would recomend to anybody interested in Jewish culture, or anybody that wants to delve into reasons why Jews, who seem to never be able to see the reasons themselves, are often disliked, throughout the world and history, by people of many races and cultures. You can also learn a lot about the tensions and infighting that goes on between secular Jews like Bloom and the Orthodox Jews too.

What is cultural identity? Matzoh ball soup or holy scripture? John Deere caps or yarmulkes? Postville is a wonderful book because it isn't written as a traditional news report that pretends to be objective and removed from the subject at hand.

Stephen Bloom's book is worth reading because he makes clear that every observer brings predjudices and what Postville reveals is the author's discovery and coming to grips with his own set of beliefs. Are deeply religious people more moral than others? Are American values of freedom really available to everyone?

As an author of a memoir myself (Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars) that deals with culture clash in Iowa--I couldn't get a flat fixed on my rental car because "Men should know how to change a tire."--I can report that Bloom has nailed the difficulty outsiders have in small towns.

I have also seen first hand how people portrayed in a book will find the worst thing the book says about them and lock onto it. You can see that in the reviews of Postville here on Amazon. Jews think Bloom is an anti-semite. Iowans think he is a snarky city boy.

But Bloom does his best to show all sides of everyone in the story, which makes his narrative more, not less, believable.

Like the book The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust that talks about the poor reception for some European Jews by their bretheren in Israel, this book is honest.

Read it, and learn what Bloom has laid out so clearly: all of us are ready to blame someone else for our problems.

Firstly, I enjoyed and was fascinated by Postville. Second, I'm a non-Orthodox, yet identifying Jew who hails from the Midwest and who attended University of Missouri-Columbia, quite similar to Iowa City. So yes, Bloom's descriptions were accurate and yes, the stereotypes are lived up to (feed commercials on TV, little in the way of ethnic culture). I also have had contact with ultra-Orthodox Jews; specifically, I have Lubavitch relatives. So I'm qualified to "judge", as it were, all sides involved, or at least no less qualified than Bloom.

Secondly, I too "came down on the side of" the Iowans. In fact, because of Bloom's descriptions of the Lubavitchers -- so antithetical to the behavior that I've come to expect from them -- I began to suspect that perhaps they were not actually Lubavitchers, but posing as Lubavitchers, or some sort of spinoff sect a la those Mormons you read about from whom the church hurries to disassociate itself. In any case, the Postville Lubavitchers certainly didn't resemble any Lubavitchers I've met.

Mostly, a seemingly trivial detail bugged me the entire way through; I say "seemingly", because it actually encapsulates (as does Bloom's stay in Iowa) what I call the American Jewish dilemma, i.e., must we be chained to an urban existence in order to remain Jewish? I'm referring to several instances wherein Bloom went out of his way to tell us that he ate treif food. Not just treif, as in "We stopped in at McDonald's for burgers on our way home", but specifically pork. The minute I read this, my respect for him dropped several notches. What was he thinking by deliberately spelling out to the reader his non-observance of kashrut? That this would endear him to gentile readers? This matter angered me far more than his unsavory descriptions of the Lubavitchers; while he can't control their behavior, he can control his own, or at least not "diss" Jewish observance from the rooftops.

The reviewer who pointed out that the locals' anger at the Lubavitchers' deserting their businesses for Wal-Mart may have been displaced anger at Wal-Mart was on target. After all, we all know what Wal-Mart is doing to small-town America's economy.

I also liked how Bookaholic put it regarding the Lubavitchers' behavior feeding into stereotypes. Indeed. However, the leap that some reviewers make to such behavior explaining anti-Semitism and pogroms -- whoa! That's forbidden territory. Don't even attempt to go there. That's where my intercultural tolerance ends, people. I had assumed that folks who read books are more incisive than that. Or do you, too, believe that an Easter newspaper headline reading "He Is Risen" is actually jounalism?