Who is your favorite Jewish author?

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Forum -> Hobbies, Crafts, and Collections -> Reading Room

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sushilover

Wed, Nov 23 2016, 4:49 pm

amother wrote:

I loved Rachel Pomerantz's older books and really disliked the last one I read. I forgot the name. It was a few years ago.
I also loved Esti Florans "conquer the darkness" and disliked a recent book she wrote (I think it was called "lift me higher"? or something similar)
Same with m. bassara

I'm not sure why, either the quality went down or my taste went up...

Regarding Rachel Pomerantz- I wonder if I only enjoyed her older books because they felt more authentic. She wrote about a baalei teshuva and converts, and I would guess that she is one herself. Her later books were about the children who were mostly ffb, and those characters felt two dimensional.

cnc

Wed, Nov 23 2016, 5:16 pm

amother wrote:

Funny- I have Conquer the Darkness, Set Me Free and Lift Me Higher. The first one reads like a total different author than the other two.. I also think the quality of the older ones can't be compared to the quality of the very recent ones.

Possibly today's teens are a different audience than the teens from twenty - thirty years ago.

debsey

Wed, Nov 23 2016, 6:36 pm

cnc wrote:

I agree. I liked Conquer the Darkness better, but I like it as a sweet YA tale. The other two are pretty good as well, but I think Conquer the Darkness was very tightly written. It's hard to write a massive adult novel as tightly.

debsey

Wed, Nov 23 2016, 6:38 pm

sushilover wrote:

Interesting point.... It's true that I identified with the characters in the earlier novels and felt the characters in the last one were not as well developed. You're saying the first two were written from the heart, and were fictionalizations of her own story and the stories of those who became frum with her, while the last one or two was her trying to get into the mindset of people who are very different from her? Could be.

mummiedearest

Wed, Nov 23 2016, 7:12 pm

chaim potok, isaac bashevis singer

thunderstorm

Wed, Nov 23 2016, 8:00 pm

I always liked Chaim Eliav
Yair weinstock and Sender Zeyv in addition to many authors already mentioned

behappy2

Wed, Nov 23 2016, 8:39 pm

Leah Fried. She wrote "I can call you Ima", "tightrope" and a few other really good books.

amother

Seafoam

Wed, Nov 23 2016, 8:51 pm

I love MUG's books too, but I need to be in the right frame of mind for them. Srsly take you to another world.

Loved Libby's A Rose Among Thorns. It's such a deep, extensive work that encapsulates an entire generation.

Also, IMHO, lots of authors do better with short stories than with novels. Again, maaybe cuz serializing a book can be a form of slow death for a good story.

Amelia Bedelia

Wed, Nov 23 2016, 9:03 pm

MagentaYenta wrote:

I love Ozick. I also enjoy Singer, Malamud, Bellow, Mark Helprin, Primo Levy, Potok, Maus, and Yaffa Eliach. I tend to be rather old school when it comes to Jewish authors. I've recently found Eliach and she is a great writer.

Yaffa Eliach passed away just two weeks ago. Sad

MagentaYenta

Wed, Nov 23 2016, 9:06 pm

Amelia Bedelia wrote:

Yaffa Eliach passed away just two weeks ago. Sad

BDE

Last winter I spent reading There Once Was A World. I'm on my second read of Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust (incredibly uplifting).

Chayalle

Wed, Nov 23 2016, 10:05 pm

For an inspirational read, I love The Committed Life by Rebetzin Esther Jungreis A"H. I recently re-read it and was inspired all over again.

PAMOM

Wed, Nov 23 2016, 10:21 pm

Magenta Yenta--classics like Yezierska, Jo Sinclair, Cahan? Marge Piercy . I liked A Winter's Tale but not all of Helperin. And I know he's not Jewish but based on your choices, John Gardner.

MagentaYenta

Wed, Nov 23 2016, 11:08 pm

PAMOM wrote:

Magenta Yenta--classics like Yezierska, Jo Sinclair, Cahan? Marge Piercy . I liked A Winter's Tale but not all of Helperin. And I know he's not Jewish but based on your choices, John Gardner.

I'd forgotten about Yezierska. I grew up with Cahan, as much as my father hated the Forward we still subscribed, but my father was always quick to point out it was only because of Cahans talent as a writer and not his political POV. I often think of advising some women here to read Sing at My Wake, some posts here remind me of passages in that book. Sinclair had talent and was one of the many Jewish writers helped by the WPA.

Piercy is probably shunned among the frum for being a staunch feminist and exploring feminist themes and s@xuality and the politics of s@x , but she is an incredible writer. When my daughters were first starting to read dystopian novels, I grabbed Woman at the Edge of Time and insisted they give it a read. They both moved on to enjoying her poetry as much as I do.

Thank you for your literate reminders.

boysrus

Wed, Nov 23 2016, 11:25 pm

Meir Uri Gottesman!

And Dov Haller - so insightful into human nature and the ills of our society.

Also Avner Gold, Etka Gittel Schwartz, Marcus Lehman.
And loved M. Bassara's 'sun inside rain.' That is a book that I read and re-read. Also love 'deep blue' by Gottesman, and EGSchwartz's novel set in the great depression (cant remember what its called)

But I see that all these authors hve been named already.

amother

Khaki

Wed, Nov 23 2016, 11:39 pm

Nachman Seltzer Yocheved Riegler

PinkFridge

Thu, Nov 24 2016, 7:40 am

boysrus wrote:

Shortchanged.
I think we may have definitions of favorite. It's possible that some of the choices here (I'm not referring to this post, where you include some of my favorites too, but this thread) may not be the most elegant and polished of writers, but wow do they tell great stories! Sun Inside Rain and Shortchanged had some passages near the end I read over and over again. (Call me a hopeless romantic.) And Deep Blue was such a fun ride: you open books by certain authors with pleasure because you know they are so competent.

And since her name hasn't come up yet, Miriam Zakon. Read The Cohens of Tzfat and Jerusalem Diaries. One of the most romantic passages I ever read was in her current Mishpacha serial, where Abe and friend show up at Moe's graduation and say, "We're your family." (And there were no women in that scene, but such portending of good things to come.)

P.S. To redeem Judaica, I'll also mention Libby Astaire's Terra Incognita and Zecharia Hoffman's Dual Discoveries.

amother

Khaki

Thu, Nov 24 2016, 9:07 am

Riva Pomerantz

Another mom

Thu, Nov 24 2016, 2:03 pm

MagentaYenta wrote:

BDE - Sorry to say that Prof. Yaffa Eliach passed away last week. Yes, very smart and talented. A loss for Am Yisrael.

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