November 30, 2007
Our monthly look at Amazon’s Jewish bestsellers
Time for our monthly look at the bestselling Jewish books on Amazon
All of these results are as of this morning, November 30. Amazon
This seems to be a popular feature for readers looking for book recommendations and ideas for Jewish reading groups.
I can’t vouch for Amazon’s categorization of its books. For some reason, you will not see Philip Roth or Michael Chabon among the authors listed here even though their books would certainly qualify as “Jewish.”
Last month, I noted that if you begin by searching for the word “Jewish” under Amazon’s Books category, you get a whole lot of results
So, I went ahead and pulled the top 10 information for the categories I could find that specifically mentioned Judaism or Yiddish or Jewish in the title.
Here are the results of the Amazon
Top Ten under Literature and Fiction > World Literature > Jewish
1. Hamlet (Shakespeare in Production) by William Shakespeare and Robert Hapgood (Hardcover – May 28, 1999)
2. A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz and Nicholas de Lange (Paperback – Nov 1, 2005)
3. Haiku U: From Aristotle to Zola, 100 Great Books in 17 Syllables by David M. Bader (Hardcover – Mar 31, 2005)
4. Disguised As Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, And the Creation of the Superhero by Danny Fingeroth and Stan Lee (Hardcover – Oct 22, 2007)
5. The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492 by Peter Cole (Paperback – Jan 2, 2007)
6. All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs by Elie Wiesel (Hardcover – 1995)
7. The Blue Mountain: A Novel by Meir Shalev (Hardcover – Jun 1991)
8. A Journey to the End of the Millennium – A Novel of the Middle Ages by A. B. Yehoshua (Paperback – Jun 15, 2000)
9. Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number (The Americas) by Jacobo Timerman, Arthur Miller, Ilan Stavans, and Toby Talbot (Paperback – Aug 30, 2002)
10. Open Closed Open: Poems by Yehuda Amichai (Paperback – Nov 6, 2006)
Top Ten under Literature and Fiction > World Literature > Yiddish
1. Tevye the Dairyman and The Railroad Stories (Library of Yiddish Classics) by Sholem Aleichem (Paperback – Oct 1, 1996)
2. The I. L. Peretz Reader by I. L. Peretz and Ruth Wisse (Paperback – Jun 1, 2002)
3.Ineffable Name Of God: Poems by Abraham Joshua Heschel and Morton M. Leifman (Hardcover – Dec 2004)
4. Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater (Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art) by Nahma Sandrow (Paperback – Dec 1995)
5. Great Works of Jewish Fantasy by Joachim Neugroschel (Hardcover – Feb 8, 1986)
6. Rabbi Nachman’s Stories by Aryeh Kaplan (Hardcover – April 1985)
7. Yiddish Wisdom: Yiddishe Chochma by Kristina Swarner (Hardcover – Jun 1, 1996)
8. The Dybbuk and Other Writings by S. Ansky by S. Ansky, David G. Roskies, and Golda Werman (Paperback – Sep 1, 2002)
9. Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers by Frieda Forman, Ethel Raicus, and Sarah Silberstein Swartz (Paperback – Oct 31, 1994)
10. A Treasury of Yiddish Stories: Revised and Updated Edition by Irving Howe (Hardcover – Dec 20, 1989)
Top Ten under Religion and Spirituality > Judaism
1. How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now by James L. Kugel (Hardcover – Sep 11, 2007)
2. Foreskin’s Lament: A Memoir by Shalom Auslander (Hardcover – Oct 4, 2007)
3. The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter (Hardcover – Sep 10, 2007)
4. When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold S. Kushner (Audio Cassette – Sep 4, 2001) – Abridged
5. The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children by Wendy Mogel (Paperback – Oct 30, 2001)
6. The Secret garden: An anthology in the Kabbalah (A Continuum book) (Unknown Binding – 1976)
7. Mazel Tov: Celebrities’ Bar and Bat Mitzvah Memories by Jill Rappaport and Linda Solomon (Hardcover – Nov 6, 2007)
8. A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Armstrong, Karen) by Karen Armstrong (Hardcover – Mar 2, 2004)
9. The Biblical World: An Illustrated Atlas by Jean-Pierre Isbouts and Bruce Chilton (Hardcover – Nov 6, 2007)
10. Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews by Poopa Dweck, Michael J. Cohen, and Quentin Bacon (Hardcover – Aug 21, 2007)
Top Ten under Biographies and Memoirs > Ethnic and National > Jewish
1. Night (Oprah’s Book Club) by Elie Wiesel (Paperback – Jan 16, 2006)
2. Anne Frank Lb by Anne Frank (Hardcover – Oct 3, 1967)
3. Foreskin’s Lament: A Memoir by Shalom Auslander (Hardcover – Oct 4, 2007)
4. The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn (Paperback – Aug 21, 2007)
5. Churchill and the Jews by Martin Gilbert (Paperback – Jun 24, 2008)
6. The Complete Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman (Hardcover – Nov 19, 1996)
7. The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father’s Nazi Boyhood by Mark Kurzem (Hardcover – Nov 1, 2007)
8. The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World by Lucette Lagnado (Hardcover – Jun 26, 2007)
9. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (Hardcover – Mar 30, 2000)
10. My Grandfather’s Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging by Rachel Naomi Remen (Hardcover – April 10, 2000)
There you go. As always, I welcome your comments.
So what is a Jewish book anyway? The question’s been asked a million times but it merits repetition. Is it a book about Jews, even if written by a non-Jew? Any book written by a Jew regardless of content and theme? Both? I mean, how is Hamlet Jewish?
And given that we are the “people of the book” and we tend to buy books a lot judging by the relative success of Jewish themed books, wouldn’t behoove Amazon to, you know, maybe have a Jewish book section with a more relevant human-generated best seller list?
Oh yikes… I should do something about that scary gravatar…
regarding amazon, if they took your suggestion, i might lose all the great traffic i’ve gotten from this post.
don’t listen to him amazon! ck’s crazy! just look at his gravatar!
My gravatar? What the heck is your gravatar?? I was suggesting Amazon hire you to compile the list!
i actually never even knew what a Gravatar was before i started using this bloggging software. the one you see with my posts are graciously provided by blogengine.net.