debsbooks

Finished Shop Talk

This was a nice little book I didn't know existed. Philip Roth interviewing a bunch of Jewish authors in the 80s and early 90s. Enough fun--onward to a Dad book (GBS maybe?) and Inventing Eastern Europe--have to start compiling my list of books for exams. I might actually graduate soon!

Finished A Hole in the Heart of the World

Now I need to get back to the books I am supposed to be reading.

More Jewish Books in progress

From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism is another book I finished over the past few weeks. Also in progress:

• Still have not finished War and the Iliad
• Robert Pinsky's The Life of David
• A Hole in the Heart of the World, that traces a set of Jewish families and how they survived being Jewish in Eastern Europe
• Reading the preface to Spinoza's Critique of Religion by Leo Strauss, which is kind of a meditation on Jewish history.

Jews of Modern France

The Jews of Modern France, that was the other one.

Memorial Book #1: Kaddish

I finished Kaddish only a couple of days ago, so I am woefully behind on my obligations. But then again so was my father, so maybe it is fitting. It was a difficult book to finish, not because it was boring but because it really was a microcosm of the mourning process, and it was hard not to go back in time and want to dwell there for a while. In the meantime, because of my class and other things, I read a bunch of other books while trying to finish Kaddish.

• Haskalah and History
• Zionism and the Fin de siecle
• Zakhor
• Imagining Russian Jewry
• Reshaping the Jewish Past
• Resisting History
• Jewish Self-Hatred
• Orientalism and the Jews

There were some others. More tomorrow. For my next memorial book, I will either read some George Bernard Shaw plays or The Trials of Lenny Bruce.