Ruth Wisse's Top Book Recommendations
Want to know what books Ruth Wisse recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Ruth Wisse's favorite book recommendations of all time.
Recommended by Ruth Wisse, and 1 others. Ruth WisseHumour is a way of allowing for all that we cannot allow ourselves because we are trying so hard to be civilized and good people. (Source)
Winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize
Julian Treslove, a professionally unspectacular former BBC radio producer, and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, writer, and television personality, are old school friends. Despite a prickly relationship and very different lives, they've never lost touch with each other, or with their former teacher, Libor Sevcik.
Dining together one night at Sevcik's apartment--the two Jewish widowers and the unmarried Gentile, Treslove--the men share a sweetly painful evening, reminiscing on a time before they had loved and lost, before...
moreRecommended by Ruth Wisse, and 1 others. Ruth WisseThe book is written from a non-Jew’s point of view who is trying to understand his friend Samuel Finkler, and why this Samuel Finkler should be so obsessed with being against the Jews. (Source)
Recommended by Ruth Wisse, and 1 others. Ruth WisseWhat Bellow does — magically almost — is to make the schlemiel into a liberal humanist. (Source)
And no Yiddish writer was more beloved than Tevye’s creator, Sholem Rabinovich (1859–1916), the “Jewish Mark Twain,” who wrote under the pen name of Sholem Aleichem. Beautifully translated by Hillel Halkin, here is Sholem Aleichem’s heartwarming and poignant account of Tevye and his daughters, together with the... more
Recommended by Ruth Wisse, and 1 others. Ruth WisseHe’s probably my favourite Yiddish writer, and I think his impact on Jewish culture and the Jewish way of life is incalculable. (Source)
"To Minsk," says the second.
"To Minsk, eh? What a nerve you have! I know you're telling me you're going to Minsk because you want me to think that you're really going to Pinsk. But it so happens that I know you really are going to Minsk. So why are you lying to me?"
Four men are walking in the desert.
The German says, "I'm tired and thirsty. I must have a beer."
The Italian says, "I'm tired and thirsty. I must have wine."
The... more
B.J. NovakMy dad also is the co-editor of [this book that is] very good. (Source)
Ruth WisseQuality counts in anthologizing and in humour as much as in anything else and Waldoks and Novak are really professionals in this field. (Source)
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