Jennifer Weiner began writing \”Good in Bed\” during a bout of Dumper\’s Regret in 1998.\n\nShe\’d been dating her nice-Jewish-writer boyfriend for a few years, but no engagement ring was forthcoming. So she requested a trial separation. \”I went home and proceeded to think about the relationship, and he went home and proceeded to date someone else,\” she says.\n\n
Joe [incredulous]: Jewish superheroes?\nSammy: What, they\’re all Jewish, superheroes. Superman, you don\’t think he\’s Jewish? Coming from the old country, changing his name like that. Clark Kent, only a Jew would pick up a name like that for himself.
\nLast month, a group of people gathered at the Jewish Community Library of Los Angeles to hear a distinguished gentleman talk about Jewish gangsters, Yiddish-speaking intellectuals and circus freaks sharing prostitutes. But there was a good reason.\n\n
Award-winning mystery writer Rochelle Krich, the \”Orthodox Agatha Christie,\” has a confession: \”I became a talk show junkie during the O.J. Simpson trial,\” sheepishly admits Krich, 52, the author of nine whodunits in as many years. \”When the trial was over, I still needed my fix.\”
Author Delia Ephron was visiting her big sister, Nora, in \”the country\” (actually East Hampton) one summer morning when she glanced at the crime report in the local newspaper.
Just Revenge
By Alan Dershowitz
Warner, $24.95.
Where does he find the time? A typical day in his life, so it seems, includes several hours put in as defense counsel in a headline-making trial; a class or two taught at Harvard Law School, a few appearances on nationally televised talk shows, three or four lectures in Jewish communities around the United States, another chapter written in his latest book about the future of American or world Jewry, a couple of quickly tossed-off book reviews and newspaper columns, and, if there is any time left, a quick trip to Israel. Most people, you would think, would tumble into bed at that point. Alan Dershowitz sits down and writes a novel.
My brother, who at 70 is younger than me by two years, has a world-class collection of the mysteries of Agatha Christie and a complete set of the novels of Anthony Trollope. They are being joined, gradually, by the Greek historians and Galsworthy\’s Forsythe Saga.
\”The Cider House Rules,\” which stretches over two nights and six hours, is a bit like a marathon race, in which the runner gets off to a slow start, picks up speed in the middle distance, and breaks the tape in a dazzling finish.
Josh Henkin will read from his new book, \”Swimming Across the Hudson,\” Mon., May 12, 7 p.m. at Dutton\’s on San Vivente. Josh Henkin\’s paternal grandfather was an Orthodox rabbi who lived in the United States for 50 years without ever learning to speak English. Still, the author was able to forge a strong connection with the old man, the kind of bond that transcended language and linked Henkin to a people and a past.\n
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