Jewish Books Are Awesome

So this is the first time I am participating in a hosted meme. Top Ten Tuesday has been my favorite meme on every blog that hosts it so I am finally joining in as well. It’s hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is “Top Ten Favorite Books from the last three (or in my case five years because I am far too picky!)”.

1. The Great Mortality by John Kelly – This is the history of the Black Plague – for those that have slightly morbid interests and are interested in history of diseases. It’s amazingly well written book that I could not put down.)
2. Book #1 – The entire A Song of Ice and Fire series. Sorry but it’s the truth. I am trying not to worry about the fact that #6 and #7 are not in sight yet
3.  The Lost. A search for the six of six million by Daniel Mendelsohn “- one of the most heartbreaking Holocaust stories. Ever. And I mean ever. I wanted to cry for months.
4. Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing by Anya von Bremzen – This is an exceptional and funny memoir of a well-known food writer chronicling her and her mother’s cooking experiment of various decades of Soviet rule juxtaposed against her own family’s stories.
5. Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart– autobiography of an immigrant experience, from early years in Russia to growing up in United States. I greatly identified with this one.
6. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak – Yet another Holocaust entry on the list. I swear I read other Jewish books that are less depressing but this one was so superb I had to list it.
7. Mariana by Sussana Kearsley – love, reincarnation, time travel and plot twists characterize my absolute favorite of Kearsley’s works.
8. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks  – Backwards history of the Sarajevo Haggadah from Bosnian war in 1990s to 1480s Spain, gorgeously written and imagined.
9. Three Minutes in Poland by Glenn Kurtz. – see my Review here.
10. Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant– beautiful Renaissance story about an illicit affair, a convent and ultimate power of love

From the fingertips of Eugenia S