Share your favorite books, your ideas and opinions with us.

Join Book Club Extraordinaire and tell us what you’d like to read, what you have read recently, and how you liked it.

We invite you to...
Celebrate Reading!

Read BExtraordinaire Blog

Upcoming Books:

Author Quotes: 
  “I have no hesitation saying that being Jewish is unquestionably one of the ways I define myself to the world. Being Jewish colors my way of seeing everything from being a parent to how to vote. 
--Michael Chabon from interview in The Jerusalem Post

Author Bio:

Michael Chabon, 49 won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. He is married to Ayelet Waldman, an Israeli-born writer and has four children. 

is reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon for May 21, 2013.

Fighting Hitler with comic book heroes? POW? Michael Chabon’s novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, tells the story of two Jewish cousins, Josef Kavalier and Sammy Clay. 
Joe draws “The Escapist” hitting Hitler. “The Escapist is a superhuman escape artist. No cuff can hold him. No lock is secure. Coming to the rescue of those who toil in chains of tyranny and injustice. Houdini, but mixed with Robin Hood and a little bit of Albert Schweitzer.” Deep down they recognize the futility of their comic super heroes to battle against Hitler, but for these cousins it means something. “If they could not move Americans to anger against Hitler, then Joe’s existence, the mysterious freedom that had been granted to him and denied to so many others, had no meaning.”


The book centers around two intertwined themes: escape and the mystery of the Prague golem. The book begins with Josef leaving his family behind as he escapes Prague with a golem in a casket during the beginning of the Nazi occupation. He connects with his cousin, Sammy in New York City. Together, they create a comic book empire during the golden age of adventure comic books between the 1930’s and 40’s. Comic books were the “great, mad new American art form” and gave young Jews in the United States a way to make a living. Josef is making money as fast as he can to deliver his family out of Czechoslovakia.

This unique narrative is especially enjoyable for word lovers. I had to keep my dictionary open -it is chocked full of numinous vocabulary, a puzzling lexicon that included “grampus,” ullage,” “parbuckle,”and some entirely fictitious words…”

I wonder what George Orwell would say. Chabon breaks many of his rules for clear writing from his essay “Politics and the English Language.” Rule #2: Never use a long word where a short one will do. #5: Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. He may be breaking all the rules but I'd say keep it up. The hyper vocabulary made the reading so enjoyable. 

Be patience, Michael Chabon begins speaking after 5 minutes. It is well worth it!