What books are you reading right now?

Relevant

 

It's still worth dipping into the KJV here and there, for purely aesthetic reasons. It really is a gorgeous piece of poetry, and should certainly be valued as such. I would hate to think that anything I said might have undercut that point, which is a serious one.

That said, there are two different questions I am seeing in your post: about Jewish sacred text and about Judaism. Here's the thing: one cannot read the Tanach-- even in the original-- and come away with anything approaching a functioning understanding of Judaism. Forgive me, I know you're Canadian, but the analogy that I like to use is that reading the Torah is like reading the Constitution: you can't truly understand how American society functions without having read it, but having only read it and nothing else, you still can't understand how American society functions. Or, to switch metaphors a bit, Torah is the legal/theological/cultural foundation upon which the edifice of Judaism is built, but you can't tell what a building really looks like by just looking at its foundations.

If you want to read some Jewish scripture, which (unsurprisingly) I support, I do think it is a good idea to read the Torah first and foremost, and probably to have more than one translation you're looking at, so you can get a sense from different renderings of the implications of the original. Aside from Fox's Five Books of Moses, I recommend The Jewish Study Bible, edited and with commentary by Marc Zvi Brettler, Adele Berlin, and Michael Fishbane (brought to you by the same folks who put out the Oxford Study Bible edition of the Christian scriptures, which is excellent also). This latter (the Jewish Study Bible) uses the New JPS (Jewish Publication Society) translation, which is the gold standard baseline translation in the Jewish world; and it adds excellent academic marginalia and footnotes, and a wonderful series of academic essays at the end by various fine Jewish scholars.

I also recommend highly Robert Alter's translations of Psalms, and of the Wisdom Books (Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes). I cordially loathe Job, but I found this translation so engaging as to make it readable; my wife, who wrote her rabbinic thesis on Job and loves it, says it is a magnificent piece of work. I like Ecclesiastes and Proverbs in the original: Alter's is the first translation I have seen of them that I really like, though the KJV Proverbs is worth reading just because so many have passed into common usage in English literature. Alter also has a forthcoming work (April 1 of this year) called Ancient Israel: The Former Prophets, which will be a translation of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, and ought to be unbelievable (he's already published a translation of most of Samuel called The David Story, which presumably will be subsumed into this newer, larger work, and it was excellent). But if you want a translation of Psalms other than the KJV (James' Psalms, though not always particularly accurate in translation, are some of his most beautiful poetic work), Alter is my go-to recommendation. Likewise, my go-to recommendation for a translation of Song of Songs (other than the KJV, whose SS is absolute best part of the whole text, poetically speaking) is that of Chana and Ariel Bloch, published under The Song of Songs: The World's First Great Love Poem. An absolutely fantastic piece of work.

I might also recommend reading some basics about Talmud. Judaism as it is practiced today (as it has been practiced for most of the last two millennia) is, in many ways, far more a religion of the Talmud than of the Tanach. The three best extant works in English introducing the Talmud and the concepts of Rabbinic Literature are The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, edited by Charlotte Fonrobert; The Essential Talmud: An Introduction, by Adin Steinsaltz; and The Talmud: What It Is and What It Says, by Jacob Neusner. The absolute best and most essential overall introduction to Jewish text as a whole-- Biblical, Rabbinic, and later-- is an utterly indispensible book called Back To The Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts, by Barry W. Holtz. All of these include selections from the Talmud and other Rabbinic Literature, and present extremely valuable information foundational to Judaism and Jewish religious and cultural thought.

For general interest in Judaism, I recommend Louis Jacobs' The Jewish Religion: A Companion and The Book of Jewish Belief, probably the best general and accessible Intro Judaism books I know of. Also, Hayim Halevy Donin's To Be A Jew, which is a classic, though written monolithically from a Modern Orthodox viewpoint. Joseph Telushkin's Jewish Literacy and Jewish Wisdom are two good surveys of some aspects of Jewish Thought. Judaism: Revelation and Traditions, by Michael Fishbane, is a very good brief developmental history of Judaism. For material by and about modern Jewish thinkers and thought, I recommend Choices In Modern Jewish Thought by Eugene Borowitz, and Modern Jewish Thinkers: An Introduction, by Alan Levenson. And if you want to read something short and lovely that really conveys some of the best feeling of what it is to live an observant Jewish life-- and something that is the best possible introduction to Shabbat (the sabbath day), the observance of which is possibly the most central institution of Judaism-- then I recommend reading Abraham Joshua Heschel's The Sabbath.

All of which is a lot, given that you were noting that you were unsure how much you want to take on. What I might recommend is start with some Hebrew Bible, see how you feel. If you read Torah or other parts of the Tanach and, once done, you find yourself intrigued, perhaps wondering how they might be interpreted by dedicated scholars, and what it might realistically be like to use them as a foundation for a society; then think about reading some stuff about Judaism, or moving on to cover some Rabbinic Literature. Anyway, I hope this helps.

 

Reading The Wheel of Time books again, it has been something in the area of 15-16 years since I read them last. Putting my nexus 7 tablet to good use and reading book 1 right now. No clue where the physical copies of the first few are anymore after this many years and moves.
I hear that one part in book 5 with the love triangle of Harry Potter, Hermoine, and Draco ranks up there with the surprise ending when a barefoot and bloody Dobby blasts Professor Severus Gruber with a wand taped to his back and watches him fall to his death from 27th floor window.

 

You do know the last 3 books have been written by someone else, don't you?

 

As I understand it, Brian Sanderson spent a fair chunk of time with Robert Jordan before he died, making sure he knew what Jordan had in mind, and how Jordan envisioned the series going; Jordan left a large amount of unfinished material, and copious notes and outlines, also.

It's less, really, that the last three books were "written by someone else," but that they are collaborations between Jordan and Sanderson.

For the record, I think Sanderson did a superb job preserving Jordan's voice and style, and I thought the entire wrap-up of the series was excellent. I finished A Memory of Light on Saturday, and I was in no way displeased or disappointed.

 

I am grateful that they (forget his name off the top of my head) kept the series going after Jordan died before finishing it. I think book 4 or 5 was where I read last which puts me 10 books behind or thereabouts.

 

I know you haven't been a fan of the Wheel of Time series, so I won't bother recommending it. But you might like Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy. It was creative and innovative, and very fresh, I thought.

 

Scalzi is one of the few sci-fi writers I read.

Redshirts was a kick, as was Agent to the Stars (aliens seek out a Hollywood agent for an image makeover before going public) and Fuzzy Nation (are indigenous creatures on a distant planet intelligent or not; the future of corporate mining depends on the outcome).

 

I've enjoyed Scalzi's "Old Man's War" series, which I thought did a very nice job balancing homages to sci-fi classics and fresh takes on classic ideas. I've read the first two installments of his new serial novel/series of short stories (being released-- weekly, I think-- on Amazon) taking place in that universe, and have been suitably amused.

 

Just finished book 3 in the Wheel of Time series. Amazon makes it too easy buy books at times, but fortunately there is nothing else in my list to buy right now.

 

I'm currently reading Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography, Total Recall.

He's an excellent writer with a dry sense of humour so I'm thoroughly enjoying it. He's also a very intelligent guy.

 

Just downloaded MASH by Richard Hooker. Yeah, the book the movie and the TV series was based on. Have some travel next week, looking forward to diving in to this