I helped my friend Pearl with her "Shtreimel Envy" essay, personally know two of the other contributors to The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide To Guilt, enjoyed Rebecca Goldstein's The Mind-Body Problem, and had a curiosity about the train-wreck essay I imagined Ayelet Waldman could produce for the book, but I was going to pass up on the anthology as too obviously gimmicky. But what look like close-to-home essays on Christmas tree conflicts and the perils of being a Santa agnostic have me intrigued again.

A reading is in DC on November 13 at the JCC.

Underneath Their Robes has reached a well-deserved critical mass that has made it a quite successful blog. I was amused by Article III Groupie's answer to Question #17 in her Crescat 20 Questions interview referring to "status anxiety" because I recommended the book "Status Anxiety" to her last year in an e-mail conversation about our "shared and continuing struggle with our status as members of the Great Unwashed." I may not have the status to merit a Crescat 20 Questions interview, but I'm influencing the discussion!