Some catch up - The Chosen

Well, it's been forever since I've blogged. I'll try again. I've found that quite often now in the evenings I decide not to even turn on my laptop. I can check emails on my blackberry so I can see if something urgent comes up that way.

So, looking back over the list I see that I haven't written anything since The Shack. We read The Chosen after that. What can I write about that book except that I love it? It seems like such a simple book, just a really good story about two Jewish boys, one who is Hasidic and one Reform. They meet at a baseball game where they both get caught up in a competetition that turns into hate. After one of them seriously injures the other with the ball, they start a friendship.

Why do I love it so much? I love the way it brings me so much into the boys' world, Jewish neighborhoods in New York. I collect teacups and some of my favorite teacups I call "be there" cups. They have a picture on them of a scene that I can imagine actually being in, the way the girl goes into the blue willow plate scene in a book I read as a girl. Good books like The Chosen are "be there" books. You are there in the world created by the author. And it's not done with a bunch of fancy descriptions. If there are descriptions, I tend to skim them. I can't remember any big passages of descriptions in The Chosen but I can picture the streets, the houses, the ball field, the hospital ward, the places in the book. So I guess one reason I love it is that "be there" phenomenon.

I also love it because it's just such a good story. It moves at the right pace. It doesn't rush to tie all the ends at the end, as so many books seem to. I also love the conversations. When my mom would bring me to the library as a girl, I remember opening books and looking for quote marks. If there were lots of quote marks I'd check further because to me that was a sign of a possible good book.

I also am fascinated by the life of Jewish people so that is probably another reason I like The Chosen so much. I went through a stage in high school of reading not only Chaim Potok books but also Leon Uris books and probably others that were about Jews. Even now I really enjoy a detective series by Faye Kellerman where the main characters are Jewish.

None of those reasons, though, seem like a good enough explanation for why I like them so much. But there you are.