Doris Bass Memorial Library & Book Club
Doris Bass, a beloved member of Israel Congregation, was a dedicated lover of books and literature. After a long career beginning in the Brooklyn Public Library and progressing to publishing, Doris moved to Vermont in 1996. Her passion for life was contagious and her passing has left us with a large hole in our lives. We have dedicated our extensive library in her memory. Today we are fortunate to have devoted congregants stewarding the library Doris championed.
The Doris Bass Library is currently overwhelmed with books that need to be catalogued and shelved with more coming in all the time and only two part time volunteers to do the work to sort through the donations. We deeply appreciate the huge effort our volunteers, are doing to accomplish this task having found some truly beautiful and special books among the donations received. We want to be able to continue to welcome the donation of engaging and educational books, but we need your help:
- Please box books or tie book donations—pre-approved by the library volunteers—with twine before dropping them off in the office, not in the library.
- If you would like your name or the name of your family member on a book plate in the book, please give us the pertinent information.
- Please consider making a donation to the Merkado Library Fund to help us in our work of making this a more user-friendly place for our congregation.
Thank You!
Join the Doris Bass Book Club!
Start your day off right with a good book. . .
On the 3rd Wednesday of each month participate in a lively and engaging conversation about
wonderful books of Jewish interest.
The next meeting of the Doris Bass Book Club is on Wednesday evening, February 18st at 7:00 pm.
The Book Club will be on holiday in December!
Join the club as we meet via Zoom to discuss this month's title.
January/February Reading recommendation
and Book Club title: James
When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim’s agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Percival Everett is a Distinguished Professor of English at USC. His most recent books include
Dr. No (finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction and winner of the PEN/ Jean Stein Book Award),
The Trees (finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction),
Telephone (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize),
So Much Blue,
Erasure, and
I Am Not Sidney Poitier. He has received the
NBCC Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award, The
Windham Campbell Prize
from Yale University, and the Stowe Prize for Literary Activism.
American Fiction, the feature film based on his novel
Erasure, was released in 2023 and was awarded the
Academy Award
for Best Adapted Screenplay. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the writer Danzy Senna, and their children.
In Praise of James
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR FICTION
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST, THE NEW YORKER, NPR, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, THE ECONOMIST, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, AND VANITY FAIR, AMONG OTHERS…
“James offers page-turning excitement but also off-kilter philosophical picaresque. . . Gripping, painful, funny, horrifying, this is multi-level entertainment, a consummate performance to the last.” —The Guardian
“[A] careful and thought-provoking auditing of Huckleberry Finn. . . [James is] a kind of commentary or midrash, broadening our understanding of an endangered classic by bringing out the tragedy behind the comic facade. And that is no small thing. I expect that James will be spoken of as a repudiation of Huckleberry Finn, but a book like this can only be written in a spirit of engaged devotion. More than a correction, it’s a rescue mission. And maybe this time it will work.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Heir to Mark Twain’s satirical vision, Everett turns a boyhood memoir into a neo-fugitive slave narrative thriller. . . Using erasure, Everett has produced a daring emendation. Redacting swaths of Huck Finn, he’s revealed another code: the untranslated story of James’s self-emancipation. . . James is a provocative, enlightening work of literary art.” —The Boston Globe
“In an astounding riposte, the much-lauded Everett (Dr. No, 2022) rewrites [Huck Finn] as a liberation narrative, told from Jim (or rather James’) point of view…An absolutely essential read.”
—Booklist
(Starred Review)
“The audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey…One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.”
—Kirkus (Starred Review)
“Ingenious … Jim’s wrenching odyssey concludes with remarkable revelations, violent showdowns, and insightful meditations on literature and philosophy. Everett has outdone himself.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
(Starred Review)
Hardcover and paperback editions are available from the Northshire
Bookstore
Or check out your local library!