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in
the
ANDREW YOUNG
Local Authors
Release New Books
SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Josh Malerman has gone beyond being a person of the book. Besides
revealing himself as an avid reader and writer, he is also a singer-gui-
tarist-composer who has arranged musical bookings to promote reading
among young people.
Malerman, author of the bestselling Bird Box: Don’
t Open Your Eyes
that was adapted into a movie, has scheduled his band, The High Strung,
in libraries. Band members talk about their favorite books and authors in
breaks from the music.
The fantasy/horror worlds of Stephen King, favor-
ites of Malerman, have influenced his writing, most
recently brought to the public with Inspection (Del
Ray; $27), a tale about young people being trained
as geniuses in two isolated northern Michigan
schools — one for boys and one for girls.
“The horror genre is so ripe for imagination,”
Malerman, 43, has told the Jewish News. “A genre
that enables writers to express whatever they want
fits right in with my personality, which is free to imagine.”
Malerman, who was bar mitzvahed at Temple Israel, is one of three
authors with ties to Jewish Detroit introducing new books.
Berl Falbaum, who often writes commentaries on current issues for
the JN, has written a book based on his family’
s escape from the Nazis
and on his journalism experience titled Recollections and Reflections:
From a WWII Shanghai Ghetto to Journalism, Politics
and Other Journeys Along the Way.
Falbaum’
s recollections include his family’
s strug-
gles in making a living in Shanghai before being able
to enter the United States. They also span reporting
years that included covering headline events for the
Detroit News and move into teaching initiatives at
Wayne State University.
“I thought it was important to stay with stories
that had historic importance,” says Falbaum, 80,
who lives in West Bloomfield and is a member of Temple Israel.
Half of sales proceeds from the memoir, his 10th book, will benefit
EnPuzzlement, a Toledo organization providing help for those needing
food, hygiene items and medical supplies. For a copy, visit sdbooksllc@
yahoo.com and Amazon.com.
Aidan Wayne, a 2007 graduate of the Frankel Jewish Academy, spe-
cializes in character-driven LGBTQ fiction and just released Play It Again
through Carina Press. The story’
s main character, Dovid Rosenstein, a
blind YouTuber, develops an emotional connection to an Irish YouTuber.
Wayne, self-defined as nonbinary in the LGBTQ community, is intro-
ducing this most recent published work, the
eighth, in print, digital and audio formats through
Amazon.
“Using these different formats is very important
to me because the main character is blind,” says
Wayne, who lives in Oak Park and attended Wayne
State University, majoring in media production.
“It’
s a contemporary book that uses technology to
showcase how relationships can evolve.”
The author, 29, writes fulltime and works part-
time in office management. During high school,
Wayne volunteered for Friendship Circle as an older sibling to a child.
“I wanted to showcase a character who was blind but not suffer-
ing or overcoming something,” Wayne says. “It’
s about somebody
who is blind, happy and successful. I write a lot about disabled and
mentally-ill characters who have successful lives.” ■
Berl Falbaum
Josh Malerman
FACEBOOK
Aidan Wayne
CARINA PRESS
featured three authors over three days.
Attendance at the now eight-day festival is
booming. Jaemi Loeb, senior director of cul-
tural arts for the Jewish Community Center,
said 2018 saw a 25 percent increase in atten-
dance over the previous year.
She acknowledges that sales at Book Fair
have been declining as participants shop for
the books they like online or buy e-books or
audio versions. But Loeb is not concerned.
“Our mission is to promote Jewish books
and Jewish authors, which means that we feel
that we have fulfilled that mission if people
read the books we promote, even if they buy
them somewhere else,” she said. And Book
Fair offers what Amazon can’
t — an oppor-
tunity to meet authors, hear what they have
to say, ask questions and discuss the presen-
tation with friends.
This year’
s Book Fair is scheduled for Nov.
2-10.
Bookstock grew out of the Brandeis Book
Sale, a much-loved annual event that start-
ed in 1961. By 2002, the local chapter of
the Brandeis University National Women’
s
Committee, which organized the sale, was
struggling to attract members. Then Tel-
Twelve Mall, where the sale was held, was
redesigned with no enclosed space, and the
Brandeis group called it quits.
A year later, a group of women held a
similar community book sale at Laurel Park
Place in Livonia as a fundraiser for Hillel
Day School. The project outgrew the ability
of the Hillel volunteers to manage it, so the
organizers invited other community groups,
especially those with an interest in literacy,
to have their own members volunteer. For
every hour a volunteer works, he or she
earns a share of the sales receipts for the
partner organization.
Bookstock’
s partners, which include
Hadassah, ORT, NCJW, JVS and the
Jewish Federation’
s Women’
s Philanthropy
Department, provide hundreds of volun-
teers who spend half the year collecting and
sorting the books and a week selling them.
Teen youth group members and day school
students help shlep books out of donors’
cars and into the sorting center on Colossal
Collection days, earning funds for their
organizations. The sale alone involves more
than 700 volunteers.
Since 2003, Bookstock has raised more
than $2 million for community literacy
efforts, said Roz Blanck of Franklin, one of
the founders.
At this year’
s sale in April, Bookstock
patrons snapped up more than 300,000
books and DVDs. Unsold inventory was
donated to thrift stores.
People love the Bookstock experience, said
Blanck. There’
s the joy of finding a treasure
you might not be looking for and the con-
viviality of talking to book-loving volunteers
and other patrons.
The danger in shopping at places like
Book Fair and Bookstock is adding yet more
books to already full shelves. Those who do
may be suffering from bibliomania — a love
of books collected just to have — or a related
condition the Japanese call tsundoku, acquir-
ing many books with the intention of read-
ing them later, even if you never do. ■
At last year’
s JCC Book Fair, author/entertainer Andy Cohen signs copies of his book.
14 May 30 • 2019
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