Book Meme / Ipod Meme

Ze’ev, tagged with the Ipod meme (turn on mp3 player; hit shuffle; post first 15 songs), and unable to carry out his obligations due to lack of digital music, allowed said meme under his care to mutate. Now a book meme, Ze’ev instructs me, either as someone whose blog he likes or as an intelligent person who knows how to read, to list 15 books.

What can I say except that the Ipod meme and the book meme are both terrific ideas? I think I’ll do both.

Here are the songs from my Ipod:

1. Roxy Music – Mother of Pearl – I first heard this song in SLC Punk and can’t figure out why it was left off the soundtrack.
2. Nirvana – In Utero – Dumb
3. Sublime – Doin’ Time
4. The Ramones – Adios Amigos – The Crusher
5. Yidcore – Yidcore – Dayenu
6. Moonshot: A Moon Ska Records Compendium – The Skoidats – Last Night
7. The Congos – Heart of the Congos – At The Feast
8. Lee “Scratch” Perry & The Heptones – Crying Over You
9. Fat Wreck Chords Presents: Survival of the Fattest – Hi-Standard – California Dreaming
10. The Abyssinians – Forward Unto Zion
11. Franz Ferdinand – You Could Have It So Much Better – This Boy
12. Bob Dylan – Maggie’s Farm
13. The Clash – The Clash – What’s My Name
14. The Velvet Underground – Peel Slowly and See (the VU box set) – Sweet Jane (full length version)
15. Operation Ivy – Energy – Gonna Find You

Here are the books (1-5 I’ve read recently, 6-10 I’m reading now, 11-15 I’d like to read soon):

1. In the Beginning by Chaim Potok. This book belongs to Ze’ev. I think I’m going to blog later about rereading it after 10+ years.
2. Religious and Secular: Conflict and Accommodation Between Jews in Israel ed. Charles Liebman. I picked this up in The Strand on my last visit to New York, and it proved to be highly challenging (Jewishly, not so much intellectually).
3. A Pocket Edition of Several Short Stories, Mostly Reactionary by Vladimir Jabotinsky. My parents got this for me many years ago from The Jabotinsky Institute and it’s now an old favorite.
4. The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam, From Jihad to Dhimmitude by Bat Ye’or. This was the second book I’ve read by Bat Ye’or and every bit as powerful as the first, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide.
5. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. My brother got this for me, and it was a great light read.
6. Midsummer by Derek Walcott. I first read poems from this collection in high school, and have more or less been reading this book nonstop since then. No poet seems more at home with the English language today than Derek Walcott.
7. Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes, trans. Edith Grossman, intro. Harold Bloom. I’ve only read the first half of this and I’ve been meaning to read the second half for almost two years. Grossman’s translation is very rich and I really get the feeling from it that I’m reading a book in Spanish.
8. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker. This is another book that my brother got for me, if memory serves me correctly. I enjoyed it a lot – for a popular science book, this is extraordinarily clear and challenging. I think I have something like one chapter left.
9. The Rabin File: An Unauthorized Expose by Uri Milstein. This book also belongs to Ze’ev. I’m actively reading it now, but only at home since it’s a heavy hardcover.
10. Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael B. Oren. This was from my brother’s then-girlfriend Amy as an Aliyah present. I’m actively reading it now, but outside of the house, since it’s a paperback.
11. The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life by Tom Reiss. This one comes highly highly recommended from, among others, Sam S.
12. Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis by Bat Ye’or. I figure I may as well just go ahead and read everything Bat Ye’or has published in English.
13. The Five: A Novel Of Jewish Life In Turn-of-the-century Odessa by Vladimir Jabotinsky. This is available in English for the very first time and I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy.
14. The Nimrod Flip-Out by Etgar Keret. I read a short story by Keret in college and considered it totally unique and, in its charming simplicity, beautiful. His stories kind of remind me of Sayed Kashua’s column in Haaretz.
15. The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy September 1939-March 1942 by Chris Browning. I actually think it would be a great challenge to try reading this alongside Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, the two of which seem to represent, respectively, the functionalist and intentionalist schools of Holocaust scholarship. I’m now more or less a moderate functionalist, so it’d be interesting to see if either of the two books is able to sway me.

Thinking about all these books reminds me how many I really want to read. So here’s my Amazon wishlist, in case anyone wants to contribute to my reading habit (contact me for proper shipping address). Also, I think one of these days I’m going to gift Ze’ev with a few gigs of digital music so he won’t feel so left out the next time he’s asked to list 15 songs.

Anyway. I tag Ari. I tag Adam. I tag Yosef. I tag Ariel. I tag Mnuez. I tag Shai. And I tag Ezra. Should be a great group. Will they accept?