Aug 17, 2025
SHOW NOTES:
TRANSCRIPT:
In honor of my 20th year of podcasting on The Book of Life, I'm bringing you another episode from the archives: Summer Coolness, released in June 2007. The episode featured a now-defunct website called ReaderGirlz, and the website Nextbook that morphed into Tablet Magazine in 2009. There were also many mentions of MySpace. I interviewed Melissa Schorr, author of Goy Crazy, who, according to her website, seems to have mostly moved on from kidlit to journalism. I must say, her most recent book from 2017, Shame Nation: Choosing Kindness and Compassion in an Age of Cruelty and Trolling, looks extremely on point. And the episode featured the band Sababa, which happily is still in existence, and in fact, they've recently released their fourth album called When We Rise.
LEARN MORE:
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ReaderGirlz history on Wikipedia, and Guest Lorie Ann Grover
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Author Melissa Schorr and her book, Goy Crazy
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Sababa website, and Guest Scott Leader
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Nextbook history on Wikipedia, and Guest Julie Sandorf
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Julie’s reading recommendations:
o Joy Comes in the Morning by Jonathan Rosen
o Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror by Jeffrey Goldberg
o When We Were Bad by Charlotte Mendelson
o Disobedience by Naomi Alderman - Bonus content for this episode on The Book of Life's Substack Newsletter
CREDITS:
- Produced by Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel
- Co-sponsored by the Association of Jewish Libraries
- Sister podcast: Nice Jewish Books
- Theme Music: The Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band
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