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Favorite Jewish books: a short/incomplete list
Friday, January 27th, 2012 08:06 am
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msmidge was asking about recommendations for Jewish fiction. So I started putting together a list. (I also started annotating it with links, but I got tired of that, so it's not as thorough as it might be. Check the usual places: your local library, Google Books, or Amazon, depending on your political leanings.)
As a jumping-off point, I found some published lists of the best Jewish books of 2011 and 2010, re[tro]spectively:
http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2012/1/2/main-feature/1/2011-a-year-in-books
http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2010/12/23/main-feature/1/a-year-in-books
And it's not hard to find lists of "Great Jewish Books", but as a rule, I have almost never read anything on them. The only Philip Roth I've actually ever read was Portnoy's Complaint, which I would probably read very differently now than I did in high school ;-) or was it freshman year of college? I distinctly remember taking it out of the Valparaiso Public Library. In any case, I should probably read Goodbye, Columbus.
( Gosh, maybe this isn't such a short list after all. )
In general, I highly recommend all of Howard Schwartz's collections of Jewish folklore: Tree of Souls, Lilith's Cave, Gabriel's Palace, etc.
In terms of nonfiction, my single favorite reference book is Blu Greenberg's How to Run A Traditional Jewish Household. Lots of practical explanations about kashrut, Shabbat, holidays, etc. And my favorite Bible translation to date is Everett Fox's The Five Books of Moses.
What are your favorites?
Shabbat shalom, y'all.
msmidge was asking about recommendations for Jewish fiction. So I started putting together a list. (I also started annotating it with links, but I got tired of that, so it's not as thorough as it might be. Check the usual places: your local library, Google Books, or Amazon, depending on your political leanings.)As a jumping-off point, I found some published lists of the best Jewish books of 2011 and 2010, re[tro]spectively:
http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2012/1/2/main-feature/1/2011-a-year-in-books
http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2010/12/23/main-feature/1/a-year-in-books
And it's not hard to find lists of "Great Jewish Books", but as a rule, I have almost never read anything on them. The only Philip Roth I've actually ever read was Portnoy's Complaint, which I would probably read very differently now than I did in high school ;-) or was it freshman year of college? I distinctly remember taking it out of the Valparaiso Public Library. In any case, I should probably read Goodbye, Columbus.
( Gosh, maybe this isn't such a short list after all. )
In general, I highly recommend all of Howard Schwartz's collections of Jewish folklore: Tree of Souls, Lilith's Cave, Gabriel's Palace, etc.
In terms of nonfiction, my single favorite reference book is Blu Greenberg's How to Run A Traditional Jewish Household. Lots of practical explanations about kashrut, Shabbat, holidays, etc. And my favorite Bible translation to date is Everett Fox's The Five Books of Moses.
What are your favorites?
Shabbat shalom, y'all.