Stacks, Piles, and Shelves

Week Four.

Since this week’s book weighs in at over 800 pages (!) — well, I’m going to have to ask for an extension. Avid reader though I am, speedy I am unfortunately not. So this week I offer this special Yom Tov gift to those who might be looking for more suggestions for this worldwide go-to-your-room-and-read quarantine. Here are my top selections with a Jewish connection from those I’ve read over the past twelve years. Why twelve? That’s when I started keeping a written record, so it’s how far back I can reliably remember (a) if I read a book, and, more importantly, (b) if I liked it. These selections are listed in no particular order of preference, just the order in which I read them.

So take a look — and, please, share your own favorites with me and others in the comments below!

Fiction

• All of the Rashi’s Daughters and Rav Hisda’s Daughter books by Maggie Anton
• I Am Forbidden (Anouk Markovits)
• The Dovekeepers (Alice Hoffman)
• Home in the Morning (Mary Glickman)
• 36 Arguments for the Existence of God (Rebecca Newberger Goldstein)
• Sarah’s Key (Tatiana de Rosnay)
• This Is Where I Leave You (Jonathan Tropper)
• People of the Book (Geraldine Brooks)
• Homesick (Eshkol Nevo)
• Second Person Singular (Sayed Kashua)
• The Liars’ Gospel (Naomi Alderman)
• The Boston Girl (Anita Diamant)
• The Mapmaker’s Daughter (Laurel Corona)
• Mrs. Everything (Jennifer Weiner)

Non-Fiction

• The Soup Has Many Eyes: From Shtetl to Chicago – A Memoir of One Family’s Journey Through History (Joann Rose Leonard)
• My Jesus Year: A Rabbi’s Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith (Benyamin Cohen)
• Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation (Yossi Klein Halevi)
• My Promsied Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel (Ari Shavit)
• Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots (Deborah Feldman)
• Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Irin Carmen & Shana Knizhnik)
• The Jew Store (Stella Suberman)
• Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America’s Legendary Suburb (David Kushner)
• Antisemitism: Here and Now (Deborah E. Lipstadt)
• The Color of Love (Marra Gad)