Sunday, December 12, 2004

book 110

sorry for the lack of posts: between the end of the semester and catching a vicious strain of flu (which i am still battling), i have not been getting a lot of reading done.

aaron lansky's outwitting history: the amazing adventures of a man who rescued a million yiddish books
thank you, aunt linda!!! my aunt picked out this book (along w/ some others) from my amazon wishlist (linked at left) for hanukkah. and this was pretty great hanukkah reading--the title was particularly apt. i'm not sure if i enjoyed this book so much b/c a) hello, it's about yiddish/jewish studies! and b) hello, it's about saving lots of books and making an amazing library!, but i really flew through this one. would this have as much appeal to non-jewish, non-library-students? i don't know--someone else read it and let me know. i think it's a pretty friggin' entertaining story, but that could just be me. i was especially interested in his trips to cuba and the former ussr--but really, the whole book is pretty inspiring. i'm still pissed they stopped teaching yiddish at duke right after i got here--and i'm now hoping this book will bring enough attention to yiddish that classes will spontaneously spring up around the country, even in places like north carolina. i sort of think aaron lansky is my hero now.

(please excuse rambling--like i said, i still have the flu.)

1 comment:

  1. that is so awesome! i really think it's a riveting story for anyone to read, but sometimes it's hard to gauge considering my own biases. :)

    what's especially cool is that i'm starting to help out at the jewish heritage center of nc, and the historian there was showing me some books he'd collected--including yiddish translations of authors like emile zola and guy de maupassant. it was just like in lansky's books! i'm so glad these books haven't been lost, b/c i really don't think anyone expects to find things like that in north carolina.

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