If you’re interested in the used and rare book trade over the past few decades (and I am), then you will enjoy this book. Alternatively, if you’re very interested in Larry McMurtry’s life (especially his life away from his own books), then you will enjoy this book. If neither of those things interests you, this book probably won’t interest you either.

I saw this play in Ashland, Oregon. If you can’t see it, read it and get your local theatre to produce it. It’s a great play about Shakespeare (called Shagspere in the play) and a scenario in which the king’s adviser Cecil wants him to write a play about the Gunpowder Plot. Can he tell the true story of a current event without getting executed alongside the alleged traitors?

Available from the OSF gift shop (tudorguild.org).

Once again, four kids (two boys and two girls) — seemingly under the leadership of Mr. Benedict, but really figuring out mysteries and making decisions on their own — fight the forces of the evil Mr. Curtain. Great fun and good lessons for adults as well as kids.

Don’t be fooled by the title; it’s not just a commentary. It includes the text of the Torah in Hebrew and English translation, plus footnotes and scholarly introductions. (It also includes the Haftarah portions, but don’t worry if you don’t know about those.)

What is the Torah? It’s the first five books of the Jewish (and Christian) Bible — also known as the Books of Moses and the Pentateuch. It contains the laws that have sustained the Jewish people for 5,000 years, not to mention the stories of Genesis and Exodus.

Jews traditionally read portions of the Torah each week, completing (and beginning anew) the cycle at the holiday of Simchat Torah, which occurs in the fall just after the Jewish New Year. So, I will be reading this translation until Oct. 11, 2009.

First off: great jokes. I had heard a few of them before, but all of them are great.

Next: The philosophy. You don’t learn a huge amount of philosophy from this book. If you’ve taken an intro course in college recently, you probably know it all already. If you took it 20 years ago, you probably forgot a lot, so this will be a refresher. If you took it 40 years ago, you probably forgot even more, and they probably didn’t get to some of the language, postmodern, and feminist philosophers anyway.

Jokes and philosophy together: They go surprisingly well, actually. So many jokes (and joke types) actually illustrate philosophical principles nicely.

I am reading the weekly Torah portions in this translation.

It doesn’t answer every question or solve every mystery, but I found the end of “The End” to be a very satisfying ending to a wonderfully entertaining series, which I have been reading for much of the past two months.

(I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this, but like all the best children’s literature, this series has some great jokes that only adults will get. In fact, some of the jokes require a knowledge of pop culture, classic literature, and Jewish culture. Nevertheless, you don’t have to get all the jokes to enjoy the series.)

In the end, the series is a wonderful meditation on good and evil, the nature of civilization, and the process of growing up. It’s very clear-eyed on all of these, without sugar-coating anything. Perfect for thoughtful children from ages 8 or 9 and up.

Wow. It took me a while to read this, but it was worth it. It’s like a symphony. Ever element in it, from the big themes to individual words and sentences, has a place that works with and against every other element. The different plot strands and characters weave together (sometimes in unpredictable — at least to me — ways). None of the characters is all-good or all-bad. Every chapter has at least one stunningly phrased revelation about how people really act and think and feel.

“A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” is the book Thoreau was working on while he lived at Walden Pond. It’s the story of a boat trip he took with his brother into New Hampshire. Since it’s Thoreau, though, there are lots of digressions, some of them on themes that would make their way into “Walden.” I didn’t like this one as much as I like “Walden” — which is one of my all-time favorite books — but if you think you might be a Thoreau fan, you should read this one, too.

The title story makes up more than half of the book. It’s an allegory about beggars with various powers, heavily annotated with explanations of its Kabbalistic symbolism.

The rest of the book consists of much shorter fables (some less than a page).

If you’re interested in mysticism in general and Jewish mysticism in particular, give this book a try.