A JOURNAL AND A BOOK

In my cataloging and reading travels lately, I have come across two things I thought were quite interesting and which I’d like to share.

The first is a little book by Etgar Keret. The title is The bus driver who wanted to be God : and other stories. It is published by Thomas Dunne Book, of St. Martin’s Press in New York in 2001. Cincinnati’s call number is PJ 5054 K3.75 A2.3 2001. As the title suggests it’s a book of short stories, only 182 pages and only 19 cm. high. Keret is like the David Sedaris of Israel. His stories give you a chuckle, but they are darker than Sedaris’s. The story that amazed me the most is called A Souvenir of Hell. It takes place in a village in Uzebekistan that was built at the entrance to Hell. It turns out that people from Hell get a day off every hundred years and they come to this village, and that tourism is the main source of income for the village. Of course there is a girl and a handsome guy from Hell, and I don’t want to spoil it for you by telling you any more.

This is a good little book to read when you need a break from studying or other stressful activities, and since the stories are short, you don’t have to take a long break at any time. We also have some of Keret’s books in the original Hebrew and reading them is a good way to sharpen your Hebrew skills.

The journal is an electronic only title, Women in Judaism. It comes out of the University of Toronto, Dept. of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations which includes the Jewish Studies program. It has been coming out since 1997 but is only up to volume 4, so it has been irregular. The articles are interesting, and I recognize the names of several of the authors. It is a refereed journal. Women in Judaism is free and anyone can sign up for it from the website, http://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/wjudaism/index. It appears in the library’s online catalog with a hot link. At this time, it is available in Cincinnati with a login and password which are available at the Circulation Desk in Cincinnati. We try to get the online resources by IP address to avoid the step of user ID and password, but sometimes we can’t do it.

While you’re at it, check out our full-text online journals on our website. From the Cincinnati library webpage, click the Journals CD-ROMS and from there go to Online Journals. There will be a list of titles. Click on the one you want to get to it. Unfortunately, at the moment it is only Cincinnati on-campus use, but we hope to change that some time soon.

Sarah Barnard

Serials Librarian,

Cincinnati Campus.