Category Archives: Personal Reflections

From the fingertips of Eugenia S

From the fingertips of Eugenia S

From the fingertips of Eugenia S

This is what I wish my books looked like. Color coded, organized, a pleasure to observe.

But this is what they look like. They are a pile of insanity and most times I just hope that they are not on the floor.

And in the end I feel that regardless of the organization, at least they always bring me such joy.

From the fingertips of Eugenia S

Though like a hell of a lot of people out there I see Valentine’s Day as a fakish holiday, I thought that it would be fun to look online for some images that capture the intended spirit of the holiday as I see it relevant to me. It’s not about gifts. It’s not about fancy foods. Its spirit is about expressing loudly and hopefully not obnoxiously how you feel about another person. My boyfriend and I don’t have a storybook romance, we have a relationship that’s based on realistic assessment of each other and acceptance and respect of who we are. We are two hearts in pages of book of life that brought us together.

My love affair with books goes back to first grade when I reluctantly (oh the irony) learned how to read. One of my clearest memories of 1st grade is my mother trying to get my 6 year old brain to understand how the letters go together and make up a word. When the eureka moment finally struck, it was as if my brain opened up for the first time. I couldn’t for the life ever put a book down after that. I read while eating, while washing my hands, while friends were trying to visit me when I was sick. All the world that mattered to me was books.

 Today books matter a hell of a lot too. But their dominance has receded enough for me to allow wonderful people into my life. Some of them share my love of reading up to my impossibly high standard. Others like my love shows their love of reading in smaller but just as significant ways. We may not be a storybook couple but we walk the path together hand in hand.

As a blogger of still very short amount of time, I feel like this:

But on another hand I worry that I don’t produce enough to feel like I am attracting enough viewership and followers. When I started the blog, I had a very specific idea and purpose. I was going to read and review only Jewish themed books because I felt that there was a real lack of blogs within this niche and I wanted to spread the word of how much interesting stuff my culture has to offer.

So far, I’ve had a blast with the books I’ve chosen. Having a blog dedicated to Jewish themes is tremendously important in this time when lack of knowledge about my culture is again on the rise and hatred comes out in unexpected places all the time. It’s not necessarily on the reported news in US, but trust me, if you look around online, plenty of other countries are reporting on it all the time. So I feel like I am obligated to give it as much as I can but is it wrong not to give it my constant all? Is it OK to read other books too? It may be easier to attract readers if I reviewed books without such a specific niche. It would be easier even if I had chosen a specific genre to literature only to review. I had tried it before but that blog didn’t really keep me interested because I couldn’t find something that would make it stand out. So I choose to stick it out. I accept that it will take me longer to build readership because not everyone is interested in Jewish books. I also accept that because I read a variety of books, I can’t review them constantly since they are not all blog related. So bear with me readers, I may not be posting every day but I am dedicated every day to bring interesting books to my readers’ eyes and minds in order to show that Jews and Jewish culture are worth your second gander.

From the fingertips of Eugenia S