I think someone tapped me to list the ten books that have stuck with me, I cant remember who it was, but if no one did, Ill accept Sharon Shapiro general tag as applying to me. 1. Huckleberry Finn - I have a fantastic relationship with Huckleberry Finn. When I was in 12th grade I started reading again after a 3 year hiatus. For various reasons I didnt read almost anything between 9th & 11th grades (except lots of gemara, which influenced me in a very unique way, but not for this list). But in 12th grade I was in Telz and they had a boarded up library (separate from their library of Feldheim and ArtScroll books, which wasnt boarded up) which some friends and I figured out how to enter. I came across some Mark Twain books (Life on the Mississippi, The Tragedy of Puddnhead Wilson, A Connecticut Yankee etc) and I read them all because as a kid I had listened to this great dramatized audio edition of Huckleberry Finn and I thought it was hilarious. That reading eventually got me onto a multi-year Twain obsession where I got into his shorter articles and was influenced by his philosophical and religious views (Ive recently gotten into a mini Twain obsession, but nothing rivals that earlier one). But meanwhile, till today, Ive never actually read Huckleberry Finn and I dont think I was influenced by any of the major themes in it. 2. The E-Myth Revisited - No hyperbole, this book changed my professional life, and my regular life. 3. Derech Hashem - This book came after years of reading Avigdor Miller, Akiva Tatz, Noach Weinberg and Yaakov Shapiro (What the Angel Taught You), listening to Amnon Yitzchak and Uri Zohar, and it finally released me from believing any of them were divinely inspired. 4. Little House books - I learned so much from these books, they took me out of 1990s Monsey NY and expanded my universe. There was a mostly-underground building at Telz yeshiva, I recognized it as an ice storage house because of those books. When we learned in Bava Kamma about the dangerous gasses hidden in caves I knew about dangerous gasses from the description of the well digging they did where they threw down a charge of gunpowder to dispel the gasses. These books also fueled my fascination with wide open spaces and beautiful America, which Ive been pursuing ever since I was a kid hiking with my father. 5. Crime and Punishment - Oh the psychological torture! This is the only Russian novel Ive ever enjoyed. 6. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - This must have been the biggest book I read as a kid and I learned about careful historical research, and learned the lesson that he who controls the media controls the nation. 7. An Instance of the Fingerpost - Accurate historical fiction is rare, and so its valuable. And this is a perfectly constructed and very complex story, which is just awesome. 8. My Little Boy - I have no words for this book, its simply sublime. I did my best in this little tribute to it and my father in honor of Fathers Day kveller/blog/parenting/teaching-my-little-girls-tolerance-with-my-little-boy/ 9. Miracle in the Andes - This book about an airplane crash in the Ande mountains wasnt especially memorable, despite the gut-wrenching descriptions of the slow descent into cannibalism the survivors made, but its notable to me simply because it was about the only book I read in the three years I was in Stamford yeshiva (I had it hidden under a staircase in the basement). 10. 10 Minutes a Day to a Better Marriage - I read this before I was married, and even before I was dating, it set the tone for my marriage and I think I owe everything to it. So because no one nominated me for this I can break the official rules without being sanctioned. 11. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbecks slow buildup, and accurate descriptions of human suffering are so powerful it must have influenced me somehow. Well, it certainly influenced me to read more John Steinbeck. 12. The Little Black Box series by Libby Lazewnik - My mother, Davii Levine- Mandel, used to read to us before bedtime. While she was reading the first book in this series she got busy for a few nights in a row and didnt read to us; I kept begging her to read because I was so caught up in the suspenseful mystery, she kept saying to me read it yourself but I couldnt read yet! Well, to make a long story short, I dove in and read it, I finished that one and read the next two books in the series, then I kept reading, and reading, and reading till there were no more Feldheim, ArtScroll, CIS, or Israel Bookshop books left...
Posted on: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 02:19:56 +0000
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