Post­ed by Nao­mi Firestone-Teeter

Alike­wise: Dat­ing based on book tastes

Love it.

We skimmed the pro­files to find a few Jewy ones:

On Portnoy’s Com­plaint: Hillar­i­ous, pointy and inteligent nar­ra­tive. A mas­ter of sto­ries and words.”

On The Cho­sen: Rec­om­mend­ed to me by my friend and for­mer col­league Car­o­line de Graaf. A com­ing of age sto­ry about the pain of life and the fathers and friends who both cause it and offer relief. The heavy reli­gious ref­er­ences (holo­caust, Hasidism, Zion­ism) are impor­tant and inter­est­ing to learn, but this nov­el can also be read for the raw emo­tions and sen­so­ry reac­tions of reli­gious and sec­u­lar peo­ple alike.”

On The Yid­dish Policemen’s Union: This book ensured Chabon took the num­ber one spot in my list of favorite authors (at least, those still writ­ing). It was hilar­i­ous, well craft­ed, and one of the most real­ly imag­i­na­tive books I’d read in a long time.

I mean, it’s a noir detec­tive nov­el tak­ing place in an alter­nate his­to­ry where Alas­ka is a tem­po­rary Jew­ish home­land, involves cha­sidic orga­nized crime, and the mur­der of a for­mer chess prodi­gy. What’s not to love?”

On A Tale of Love and Dark­ness: I love the descrip­tions in this book. There are many which are com­plete­ly mes­mer­iz­ing like when he describes books as sexy or his descrip­tions of rel­a­tives and their abrupt way of speaking.”

(via Medi­a­Bistro)

Orig­i­nal­ly from Lan­cast­er, Penn­syl­va­nia, Nao­mi is the CEO of Jew­ish Book Coun­cil. She grad­u­at­ed from Emory Uni­ver­si­ty with degrees in Eng­lish and Art His­to­ry and, in addi­tion, stud­ied at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don. Pri­or to her role as exec­u­tive direc­tor, Nao­mi served as the found­ing edi­tor of the JBC web­site and blog and man­ag­ing edi­tor of Jew­ish Book World. In addi­tion, she has over­seen JBC’s dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives, and also devel­oped the JBC’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series and Unpack­ing the Book: Jew­ish Writ­ers in Conversation.