Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
(I was aware you are an atheist -- I also got the impression that that would not stop you from trying out a *themed* book if it sounded interesting!  Right?) |
I'll try anything once if it doesn't scar, and twice if it makes money!
(Okay, not really, but you're right, I don't consider mere religious or other theming to be a deal-breaking barrier to my trying out stuff, unless there are other factors involved like the creators being very unsavoury persons whom I wouldn't want to give my time, much less my money, which is why I will never read or post certain freebies from Focus on the Family, no matter how much I like Viking stuff otherwise.)
In case
The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick was one of the ones that made your TBR, it's now 75% off as a Read an Ebook Week special from Bev Editions @
Smashwords.
You can also get a freebie of of a Jewish-themed mystery novel by Howard Engel (
Wikipedia), who has an Arthur Ellis Award (our top national crime writing prize) as well as an Order of Canada:
The Whole Megillah, and Lita Rose-Betcherman's (one of our award-winning history writers) non-fiction about the rise of 30s fascism in Canada, is also 75% off with coupon, if you're interested, and the late Mordecai Richler gave this high praise:
The Swastika and the Rose
I
think I might have one or two giftable Morley Torgov BevEditions books left from last year's RAEBW when they were freebies-via-coupon (not TOCOGM, though), and if you really want to try his writing before you maybe-buy, please let me know and I can dig around in my email archives and see if I still have them and didn't send them off to another MR member like IIRC doing to the Engel mystery last year.
Also, a few more mystery/fantasy/graphic novel recommends if you're interested (some YA-ish or by YA-writing authors like Esther Friesner, but it would be pushing the point of this thread to post the lot as-is, so under the cut they go):
Spoiler:
- Search the Seven Hills aka The Quirinal Hill Affair by Barbara Hambly once again. This is a murder mystery set in Ancient Rome which, while it focuses a lot more on early Christianity, has as a very important plot-behind-the-plot point the differences between early Christians and Jews and the typical Roman perception of them being pretty much the same, even though they're not, and Hambly is herself now a history teacher and Did The Research on her stuff.
This is one of my favourites of her works, and really quite good, IMHO, and I wish she'd written more in this setting. It's another couponable Open Road reprint which sometimes goes to deep-discount sale.
- Many of the urban fantasy works by Esther Friesner (ISFDB, Wikipedia), which you'd probably have to hunt down in used paperbacks, sorry. She's one of my favourite humorous fantasy authors and often incorporates New York secularized Jewish cultural attitudes into her characters and settings.
- If you're in the mood for more humorous fantasy, the adventures of Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson (Wikipedia) by the late George Alec Effinger (ISFDB, Wikipedia). Effinger himself is not of Jewish background, IIRC, but he had a great deal of respect and affection for the character he created of a New York Jewish-American Princess who steps into the worlds of and satirizes a whole bunch of sword & sorcery pulp fantasy tropes. From the other Abrahamic religions if you're interested, Effinger also wrote the really good Budayeen science fiction series with Muslim themes, which netted him some Hugo and Nebula wins. He was married to Barbara Hambly for a while, and in her historical urban fantasy novel set in silent-film-era Hollywood Bride of the Rat God (also an ORM reprint, and also highly recommended if you're interested in Hollywood cast & crew vs an ancient Manchurian demon), there's an expy of him as the Jewish cameraman Alec Mindelbaum, who's a major supporting character.
Budayeen is e-printed by Open Road, unfortunately, I don't think Maureen Birnbaum has made it to e-book (except for the one short story that's collected in a Baen anthology), but 
that it'll one day happen as ORM keeps digging into his back-catalogue.
- If you're willing to try some French bandes déssinées available in English translation (no idea what the availability on these would be like in your part of the presumably-US, but they're pretty common here in my part of Canada), Joann Sfar (Wikipedia) has some really good specifically Jewish-themed historical life experience BDs (tween/YA-friendly, though not specifically targeted towards them).
Klezmer is based a bit on his own Ashkenazic ancestry and how his great-grandparents or whatever got together, IIRC, but IMHO while that was pretty decent, by far the better of his works is The Rabbi's Cat, based on the Sephardic Jewish community in Algeria. This has been adapted to an animated film suitable for showing to the kiddies (Wikipedia), though I've no idea if you can get an English-language dub or even subtitles should you need them. It's one of my personal favourite BDs and I highly recommend it.