Are you looking for Jewish books?
What about the traditional classics?
Here is a list I did a few years ago:
Classic Literature - One Opinion (as of September 10, 2008)
Here are my suggested literary classics, with very brief comments. This
definitely incomplete list is based on what I read and
enjoyed as a young adult. It includes characters and stories that are
part of our cultural heritage, stories that ask important questions,
and, occasionally, books that were recognized as classics in my youth.
There are many other lists of classics available from libraries and
websites; my list overlaps those at the Westport Public Library. At
least for now, the only order to this list is stream of consciousness. I want
to thank my husband for his contribution to this list.
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice. Also try Emma, Sense and Sensibility,
Persuasion, etc.
* Wonderfully complicated, clever use of language.
* Use of the "unreliable narrator."
* Justice triumphs over mercy: Jane Austen is not kind to her
characters. As opposed to....
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre.
* Gothic novel: innocent young woman; brooding man with a secret;
mysterious goings on in a large, old house.
* Also, good and bad educational environments.
* Coincidence or fate plays an important role.
* The author lets the heroine's rivals live happily ever after.
Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, etc.
* The dialect in Huck Finn put me off the book, which I now think is
about the moral growth of the main character. Tom Sawyer is a terrible person
in it.
* A Connecticut Yankee ends in disaster, as readers familiar with the
King Arthur story will already know.
* Mark Twain lived in Hartford.
Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe
* Positive portrayal of Jews.
* Robin Hood appears.
* The character of Rebecca is supposed to be based on Rebecca Gratz (as
in Gratz College) of Philadelphia.
Howard Pyle, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, The Story of King Arthur and
His Knights, etc.
* An important illustrator of children's books.
* Retold and popularized old stories and legends.
C.S. Forester, Captain Horatio Hornblower (series)
* Young man goes to sea in the British Navy.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, etc.
* The world's most famous detective.
Agatha Christie. And Then There Were None, The Mirror Crack'd, A Pocketful of
Rye, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, etc.
* Creator of Miss Marple and Hercules Poirot.
* Most famous mystery writer of the 20th century.
* Some of her stories are based on real life news stories.
Edgar Allen Poe, "The Purloined Letter," "Annabelle Lee," "The Bells,"
"The Raven", "The Imp of the Perverse," "The Fall of the House of
Usher," "The Masque of the Red Death," etc.
* Horror stories, poetry, mysteries.
* He creates a mood very well; avoid his horror stories if you don't
like that mood.
Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel
* Early example of a superhero (albeit without magical powers) with a
secret identity.
* There are sequels to the book.
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, etc.
* Being forced to read the beginning of David Copperfield and having to
answer simple questions at the end of each chapter turned me off Dickens.
Nevertheless, I read A Tale of Two Cities on my own and went around quoting the
ending; of course, that may have been from seeing the Ronald Coleman movie
version.
P.G. Wodehouse, <Jeeves and Wooster stories, Mr. Mulliner stories, novels>
* One of my favorite authors. Anything he wrote is good.
* Wrote the lyrics to "Bill" in the musical, Showboat.
* Lots of references to poetry, Shakespeare, adages. Finding the
sources of the quotes would provide a good education in poetry.
* Wonderfully pleasant and clever writing.
* I maintain that Bertie Wooster is a saint and Jeeves has is own
interests at heart.
* I prefer his earlier works (but after his boarding school books) to
his
later ones. Not that it matters, but Wodehouse does sometimes repeat
himself.
* There is no evil in the worlds he creates, I think because there was
none in him.
J.R.R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit.
* I had trouble getting into The Hobbit until I finished The Lord of
the Rings.
* My husband and son enjoyed the books more than I did. I guess I
prefer a
little more character interaction and fewer descriptions and adventures.
* What impressed me most was the mountain that was older than the
concepts of good and evil.
J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
* Captain Hook and the Darling children's father are acted by the same
person in the play.
* One of those books that has means different things at different times
of your life.
Clarence Day, Life with Father
* As I remember it, the episodes in the book were well written,
interesting, and wholesome. But not as syrupy as, say, Cheaper By the Dozen.
Leonard Wibberley, The Mouse that Roared, etc.
* Deservedly popular author of my childhood (1950s and '60s) who is
almost impossible to find nowadays.
* Wrote books for children, sometimes under other names, and for adults.
* The Mouse that Roared was made into a movie with Peter Sellers. There
were several sequels.
Jane Yolen, Briar Rose, All Those Secrets of the World, etc.
* Briar Rose is a Holocaust story with parallels to Sleeping Beauty.
I'm a sucker for fairy tales.
* All Those Secrets of the World is a children's picture book with
parallel scenes and a bold statement
at the end that I'm not sure I agree with. I kept taking out of the
library until my daughter bought me my own copy.
H.G. Wells, The Time Machine, "The Country of the Blind," etc.
* Early science-fiction with a message (like most good science fiction).
L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz
* An American fairy tale.
* Lots of sequels and spin-offs.
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
* Antiwar story about a German soldier in World War I.
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
* Early horror story.
* Written by a young woman on vacation as part of a contest.
* Frankenstein is the name of the scientist, not his monster.
Bram Stoker, Dracula
* The vampire in this book is not as romantic as the Dracula of the
movies.
* Clever devices like a discarded journal create suspense: As we read,
we know
that the character who wrote in the journal survived each day that has
an entry, but not if he survived the finding of his journal.
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
* Personally, I find the book too wholesome and proper. But other
people like it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, A Wonder Book, Tanglewood Tales
* These are retelling of Greek myths and legends.
* I read The Scarlet Letter and was impressed by how a story so filled
with passions could be written is such a distant and dull manner.
Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
* A young man goes to sea.
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass
* The author was a math professor: lots of clever word plays, logic
jokes.
* He invented the term, portmanteau word, for its use in "Jabberwocky"
in Through the Looking Glass.
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, etc.
* Some plays are readable; don't worry about the obscure words or find
a version with definitions on the side.
* Some plays are easier seen than read.
Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time, The Singing Sands, To Love and Be Wise,
Miss Pym Disposes, etc.
* Mystery writer.
* The Singing Sands created a magical mood the first time I read it.
There is no magic, just a mystery about who the dead man on the train is.
* The Daughter of Time suggests an alternate way of looking at Richard
III and makes you think about how history is created.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, etc.
* Funny, thought-provoking.
Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of
the Earth
* Not as much fun as Douglas Adams, but he wrote "classics."
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes, etc.
* He wrote lots of adventures, including science-fiction.
H. Rider Haggard, She, King Solomon's Mines
* King Solomon's Mines has a poignant side story about an Englishman
and an African woman who fall in love.
Winston Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples
* Well written and interesting (according to my husband; I have not
read this four-volume work).
Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Golem, "When Schlemiel Went to Warsaw," In My
Father's Court, Stories for Children, etc.
* Yiddish-writing Nobel Laureate.
* Not all his books are for children or young adults.
* "When Schlemiel Went to Warsaw" uses a simple Chelm story to talk
about issues of self-identity.
Elie Wiesel, The Golem, Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic
Masters, Messengers of God
* His book, Night, describes in painful detail his experiences in a
concentration camp.
* Messengers of God is a provocative exploration of people in the
Tanach.
Sydney Taylor, All of a Kind Family, etc.
* Delightful stories about an immigrant Jewish family growing up in New
York City in the early 1900s.
Aesop's Fables
* Many versions exist.
* Aesop was either a Greek slave or a combination of the authors of the
fables associated with the name of Aesop.
* Origin of "sour grapes," "The Tortoise and the Hare," etc.
Hans Christian Andersen, "The Little Mermaid," "Thumbelina," "The Princess and
the Pea," "The Red Shoes," etc.
* His fairy tales are much more personal and less folkloric than
Grimms'. Also more sentimental.
* I suspect there are Christian references in his stories: lots of
undeserved suffering---see "The Little Match Girl."
The Brothers Grimm, Children's and Household Tales
* An exceedingly important collection of fairy tales, rewritten as
newer editions came up.
* Some of the stories end horribly. Perrault's stories are less grisly.
Charles Perrault, "The Sleeping Beauty," "Little Red Riding Hood,"
"Donkeyskin," etc.
* Early teller/recorder of fairy tales.
* "Little Red Riding Hood" is a cautionary tale about young women being
seduced.
John Jacobs, English Fairy Tales
* He collected them.
* I like folktales.
Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur
* The King Arthur stories are an important part of Western
literature and history (not that they are historic, but they show us
what was important at the time they were written)
Beowulf
* This epic poem is an important part of English literature
* Read a version that has the rest of Beowulf's life, not one that
stops with the fight against Grendl's mother.
Rudyard Kipling, Kim, Just So Stories
* I remember enjoying Kim when I was young. I don't know if there are
"political correctness" problems with it.
* Just So stories, also known as pourquoi stories, I recently learned
(from
storyteller, Heather Forest) are really about character faults.
Julius Lester, Tales of Uncle Remus: The Adventures of Brer Rabbit
* American folklore.
* Brer Rabbit is a trickster character who outwits those in power.
Joanne Greenberg, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, The Far Side of Victory,
In This Sign, High Crimes and Misdemeanors
* I Never Promised You a Rose Garden apparently portrays a girl's
insanity accurately
* High Crimes and Misdemeanors has a story about a woman who starts not
believing in G-d and ends not
believing in gravity: we see her floating in her apartment.
* In This Sign is about a deaf couple and their hearing daughter.
* She also wrote The King's Persons, about the massacre of Jews at York
in 1190. I have not read it yet.
Donna Jo Napoli, The Magic Circle and other spin-offs/retellings of fairy tales
* The Magic Circle, a retelling of "Hansel and Gretel" from the witch's
point of view, reminds of Ingmar Bergman's movie, The Seventh Seal, which my
history professor said gave an accurate presentation of what life was like in
the Middle Ages.
E.L. Konigsberg, Father's Arcane Daughter, etc.
* One of those books in the children's section of the library
because there are children in the story; as an adult I thoroughly
enjoyed it.
Howard Schwartz, Diamond Tree: Jewish Tales from Around the World, etc.
* He retells Jewish folktales and Midrash in several books.
Lawrence Kushner, The Book of Letters: A Mystical Alef-bait, etc.
* A book about the Hebrew letters---how to draw them, their
meanings, words that start with them, stories about them---by a Reform
rabbi who has written other books on spirituality.
Raphael Patai, Gates to the Old City: A Book of Jewish Legends
* A collection of brief passages of Jewish texts throughout time.
Ruth Krauss, Minestrone
* A collection of works by this important children's author.
Andrew Lang, The Blue Fairy Tale Book, also other colors of Fairy Tale Books
* collections of fairy tales and folktales from around the world
Gyo Fujikawa, Mother Goose
* Any collection of Mother Goose poems; I happen to like the pictures
for this one.
* There is also an annotated Mother Goose.
Homer, The Illad and The Odyssey
* Classics.
* Contains Helen of Troy, the Trojan Horse, Cyclops, Achilles heel,
Mentor and more.
Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda
* Heroics and treachery and noble sacrifice.
Samuel Delany, The Ballad of Beta-2
* Obscure science fiction about how deciphering a text explains what
happened to a group of people.
Edwin Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
* A mathematical story with a social message.
George Gamov, One, Two, Three...Infinity
* Lots of math and very interesting, as I remember it from long ago.
James Hilton, Lost Horizon
* Story about a perfect society, Shangra-La.
O. Henry, "The Gift of the Magi," "The Last Leaf," "The Ransom of Red Chief,"
etc.
* Interesting stories, usually with a twist.
Strunk and White, The Elements of Style
* A short grammar book.
The Thousand and One Nights, also sometimes known as The Arabian Nights
* Folklore within a story about Scheherazade
Esther Hautzig, Seven Good Years and Other Good Stories of I.L. Peretz
* I.L. Peretz retold Jewish folktales in Yiddish and was one of a group
of writers who used Yiddish to write literature.
P.L. Travers, Mary Poppins
* Episodes about the famous nanny and her charges.
Gilbert and Sullivan, The Mikado, The Pirates of Penzance, etc.
* Clever dialogue and lovely music enjoyed by George Gershwin and
Groucho Marx, among many others.
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
* Stories about a group of animal friends; some of the stories are
strange.
Johanna Spyri, Heidi
* Young girl who grows up in the mountains helps bring a city girl back
to health
"... I've got a little list... The task of filling up the blanks I'd rather
leave to you."
W.S. Gilbert, The Mikado.
Rose Myers
Fairfield, CT
Stories are how we make sense of the world.
________________________________
From: Aviva Adler <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2013 1:40 PM
Subject: [ha-Safran] Looking for books for HS students- both literary and
"kosher"
I'm trying to put together a list of books appropriate for high school students
that are both literary (meaning suitable for a book discussion group) and
"kosher" enough for yeshiva students. The Jewish novels I am familiar with are
not very literary and the secular YA literature is rarely "kosher" enough.
Anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks,
--
Aviva Adler
Librarian,
Shevach High School
Flushing, NY 11367
[email protected]
__
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