Researching my next book!

May 21, 2019May 21, 2019beccakinla novel, prewriting, research, Uncategorized Tags: FSU, interviews, jewish, jews, novel, planning your novel, prewriting, research, soviet jews 2 Comments

While I’m deep in the querying process for my first adult novel and my first secular picture book, I’ve started to research my next book. I began with digging out some old interviews I did for an article I published about the Jewish experience of the Cold War, and have acquired some reading material which should help.

And now I’m doing interviews!

Since my university background is in anthropology, I spent quite a bit of time learning how to do interviews for research purposes. It’s a little different than interviewing for an article, because you ask many people similar questions, and then look for patterns and anomalies in those patterns. It took a couple interviews to get into the groove, but now I’m having a blast, and learning a bunch, too.

Photo by Julius Silver on Pexels.com

I love the way so many questions I ask lead to new questions, unexpected little journeys.

In case you are wondering, the topic I’m researching is living under Communism as a Jewish person. I’ve got many female respondents so far, and many people from Russia or the Ukraine. If you are Eastern European, from a Central Asian republic, or male, who was born before 1984 (so you have some memory from before the fall of the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact), and you would like to be interviewed, email me at beccaklempner@gmail.com.

My review of Letters from Mir and the wonders of primary sources

February 3, 2015February 4, 2015beccakinla reading, recommended reading, research, writing Tags: history, jewish, letters, letters from mir, primary sources, research, teaching Leave a comment

Last week, The Jewish Home L.A. ran my review of the new book, Letters From Mir. Of the books I’ve reviewed professionally in the last couple months, it was the one that surprised me most, on more than one level.

When I read the cover blurb, I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about the book. I warmed up a bit while reading the introductions (yes, that’s plural), but was completely won over once I hit the actual letters. These form the centerpiece of the volume, and they consist of those by and addressed to a young rabbi and yeshiva student, Rabbi Ernest Gugenheim during the tumultuous period that preceded the Second World War.

If you want to read about that book, you can do so here, but my favorite thing about the book touches on a topic that can be applied more widely: the importance of primary sources in understanding the past. Continue reading →

You might have suspected trolls are crazy…it turns out they are.

February 16, 2014beccakinla internet, reading, research Tags: behavior, blog, bully, comment, cruel, internet, mean, psychology, reader, research, sadism, sadist, troll, web site, website 3 Comments

I just had to share this brief but fascinating article about a study that demonstrated internet trolls are in fact sadists. Check it out here.

Take 2 Books and Call Me in the Morning: British docs prescribe books for patients

December 22, 2013December 22, 2013beccakinla parenting, parents, personal safety, reading, recommended reading, research, students, teachers Tags: alternative, anxiety, benefit, book, books, britain, british, depression, docs, doctor, doctors, eating disorder, england, general practitioner, gp, health, library, mental health, mood, patient, prescribe, prescription, psychologist, psychology, read, reading, recommend, recommended reading program, relationship, research, shrink, social worker, therapist, therapy, uk, united kingdom, wales 1 Comment

Therapeutic reading?

Imagine popping a couple chapters of a book instead of two of these.

Newspapers are reporting that doctors in the United Kingdom will be prescribing self-help and health books as reading material for those suffering from a variety of mild-to-moderate mental ailments, such as mild depression, anxiety and panic attacks. The CEO of the British charity the Reading Agency, Miranda McKearney, explained in an article in The Guardian, “There is a growing evidence base that shows that self-help reading can help people with certain mental health conditions to get better.”

Wales has already started the recommended reading program, with England scheduled to start in a few months. Continue reading →

Conducting interviews to bring realism to your fiction

December 13, 2013December 22, 2013beccakinla fiction, HaModia, how to write, preparing, publishing, research, stories Tags: anecdotes, binyan, Cuban Missile Crisis, detail, Duck and Cover, fiction, history, interview, interviews, learn, magazine, past, realism, rebecca klempner, research, short story, survey, tips, writer, writing 1 Comment

Radio and television connected Americans with the facts of the ongoing crisis, and also increased their anxiety about its dangers.

You’ll find my story “Duck and Cover” in this week’s Binyan. While I lived through the tail-end of the Cold War, I’m not old enough to have survived the Cuban Missile Crisis, the setting for my story. In order to get details about how teens reacted to the situation, I conducted brief email interviews of a number of subjects who were old enough to remember the events. I asked about their feelings, how they coped with them, how they heard about the crisis, how the adults around them (both parents and teachers) reacted, and so on.

How did I use the interviews?

The responses I received were fascinating, and often contradictory, Continue reading →

How to optimize your Goodreads “To-Read” list

October 16, 2013beccakinla advice, award, book, books, boring, clean, comments, failure, friendship, habit, kosher, labeling, librarians, library, lists, literacy, literature, modesty, novel, novels, research, review, reviews, stories Tags: amazon, book, books, choose, choosing, choosing the right book, disappointment, experience, favorite author, goodreads, hate, have to read, how to buy books, library, list, must read, pick, picking, preferences, read, reader, reading, review, select, selecting books, selection, taste, to-read 4 Comments

A few weeks back, I posted about how we select the books we want to read now, next and never.

On a related theme, I just spent an hour culling unwanted books from my Goodreads “To-Read” list.

Because what good is a “To-Read” list if you don’t really want to read the books on it?

After my very well-intentioned husband took the aforementioned list to the library and returned with many of the books it contained, I discovered few were readable in the land of Mrs. Rebecca Klempner. Three offended my (admittedly rather sensitive) sensibilities so much that I immediately took them out to our van and left them there to be returned to the library. Ugh.

How do such books get on my “To-Read” list in the first place? Continue reading →

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Therapeutic reading?

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How did I use the interviews?

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Because what good is a “To-Read” list if you don’t really want to read the books on it?

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