What I'm Reading--In Case Anyone Wants to Know

New English Review Substack

I read from right to left (in Hebrew) and from left to right (in English). Every week, I try to read at least one chapter in the Torah and a few commentaries on it. I am also trying to read Pirkei Avot (the Wisdom or the Saying of our Fathers). It is all in English and is a storehouse of knowledge.

And then I read the New English Review (one of the best literary, artistic, religious, and political online sites--thank you Rebecca Bynum, Esmerelda Weatherwax, and Kendra Mallock). Full disclosure: They happen to have three of my books in print--Islamic Gender Apartheid: Exposing a Veiled War Against Women, A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killing, and Requiem for a Female Serial Killer.

Most mornings, over coffee, I no longer read The New York Times, except for the Obits and maybe for an article or two that especially interest me. I now read The New York Post while, at the same time, scouring Israel National News--thank you, Rochel Sylvetsky; The Jewish Voice--thank you, Fern Sidman; Tablet--thank you, Alana Newhouse and David Samuels. Full disclosure: I have often published at all these sites. I also read the hard copy of The Jewish Press, a place where most of my articles were once routinely published for at least 10-15 years.

Soon enough, I check Fox News (thank you, Lynne Jordal Martin) and Middle East Forum, one of the very best academic and expert foreign-policy sites (thank you, Daniel Pipes and Gregg Roman). And I check The Investigative Project on Terrorism (thank you, Steve Emerson). Full disclosure: I have also published at all these sites.

I subscribe to The Wall Street Journal, especially for their Sunday book review section and for Peggy Noonan's columns; to Commentary (a really excellent political, literary, and arts publication); The London Review of Books (left-wing but for me a must-read); The Times of London--ditto; The Washington Post--ditto; The Spectator, both the American and the World versions (matchless)--thank you Seth Forman for publishing some of my work; The Jewish Review of Books, which is another superlative source, but I was very disappointed when their reviewer did not do justice to Dr. Shulamit S. Magnus's absolutely amazing, highly readable, and deeply scholarly work titled: Jewish Marital Captivity: The Past, Present, and End of a Historic Abuse. Perhaps they'll revisit this again?

As the day proceeds, I check I-24 on my TV, but CNN too. Sometimes even MSNBC and the BBC to see how they are spinning the same news of the hour.

I always check what Elder of Zion has to say; I read Frontpage Mag (where once I was published), especially for the articles by Daniel Greenfield, Bruce Bawer, and Robert Spencer. Full disclosure: I once published there quite a lot in the earlier part of the 21st century and took holy hell for doing so. Of course, I also check JNS at least twice a day (thank you, Jonathan Tobin and Karin M. Smilk). I used to publish there as well. I also read Claire Berlinski's The Cosmopolitan Globalist.

By this time, I've also read some of the articles that appear in my inbox on a vast variety of subjects, including feminism, the Middle East, foreign policy, Israel, Islam, women-in-trouble, philosophy, opera, painting, and much more.

It's a bloody miracle that my eyes do not get tired and close in protest.

At least once a month, sometimes daily, I read astonishing and important articles at The Atlantic, Fathom, The Free Press, Unherd, Substack, and Quillette. I even read Vanity Fair to catch up with the British royal family gossip and with all the new faces, the ever-younger celebrities. I read pretty much everything that Melanie Phillips, Eve Barlow, Matti Friedman, Jennifer Dyer at The Optimistic Conservative, Richard Landes, Avi Bell, Eugene Kontorovich, Raymond Ibrahim, Douglas Murray, Khaled Abu Toameh, Giulio Meotti, and Fiamma Nirenstein have to say--but I also read absolutely everything that Feminists Against Antisemitism post.  (GO YOU FABULOUS GIRLS! LADIES! WOMEN! WARRIORS!)

Yes, please consider this as a good-start reading list for others. My other point: Anyone who reads less, or who only reads media that represents one of many aisles, cannot really weigh in on what's happening today.

And then I try to return my emails, make some phone calls, and only then do I continue researching and writing my new book: The Complete and Utter Palestinianization of American Feminism. These days, I am spending about ten hours each and every day on this. 

Lord: Give me strength.

But "Don't weep for me Argentina." At night, after I check at least five different channels for the breaking news, I watch costume and time-travel films; episodes about exceedingly quirky detectives; foreign detective films and murder mysteries set in the UK, France, Italy, and the Nordic countries. Recently, I re-watched Lee with Kate Winslet about the WWII combat photographer Lee Miller; The Green Book, about a Black musical genius, a classical pianist, who needed armed protection in order to travel through and perform in the American South; and an endless number of Holocaust-era films. I remain haunted by the series titled The Spanish Princess; it is about Catherine of Aragon and the dangerous and deadly doings at the Tudor Court. Henry the Eighth is a bloody Bluebeard and all who wished to keep their heads should have kept their distance. And I always, always watch the films up at Chai Flicks. I'm an opera buff, and sometimes I watch an opera or just an Act on my Met Opera live-streaming channel, but I also just watched a very operatic detective series set in Naples: Inspector Ricccardi. It has the most romantically over-the-top tragic ending.

Surely the internet is the devil's work and yet, so many good things can also happen only because it exists.