Kosher Non-Jewish Books

Define immorality… Everyone has a different definiton so no one can recommend unless we know what you want!

Curious George.

What genre are you interested in?

Try non-fiction.

Terry Prachet, Cornelia Funke (more children’s books but an amazing writer), Trenton Lee Stewart (also more for children but a great story line- really makes you think), Christopher Paolini, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ray Bradbury and John Green to name a few.

A warning about John Green: Depending on what you’d consider immoral you might want to be careful with his stuff.

The glue used in the binding of many books is a mucalage derived from rendered horses. You can hardly call any of these books kosher.

Terry Pratchett is clean for a given definition of clean.

I hate it when that Happens. I love Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman, but only about five curse words, etc. in the whole flipping book are enough to prevent me from recommending it to people as a clean book.

I mean, really… what exactly did it contribute to the plot? Negative zilch.

Terry Pratchett is clean for a given definition of clean.

A Feegle’s?

I have to repeat fkelly. Define “clean”.

How about “The rise and fall of the Third Reich” or “Bellum Judaicum” by Titus Flavius Josephus. Those will keep you busy for a while.

Grimms Fairy Tales except for the Anti-Semtic one

O, also The Prime Ministers- by Yehuda Avner- it’s a must read and will keep you busy for a loooong time 😉

It depends on how you define “kosher”, and perhaps is ultimately a question for whomever you rely on for halachic decision making.

In the case of literature there are both issues of decency (what we don’t talk about on YWN) and also of apikorses. Many stories such as Moby Dick, Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, etc., all are considered to have “Christian” themes. For non-fiction what is “kosher” is much more complicated since you read non-fiction not for entertainment but to gather facts to make judgments pertaining to the real world.

Perhaps it would be useful if there was a site that review non-Jewish literature from a Torah perspective (and written by someone who if familiar enough with the goyim’s culture to realize a religious perspective).

Peter and the starcatchers

anything by jodi picoult. shes the best!

Rochelle Krich, Alan Furst

OOM: Yes, that’s what my friend said too… I get the feeling that didn’t go very well.

It’s like the whole nonsense with the Bechdel Test. Most of my favorite movies wouldn’t pass, but SO WHAT?

I love John Green, but as Luna said- you gotta be careful.

Cassandra Clare is a really good author!

Divergent by Veronica Roth, one of my favorites!!

OOM: Sorry, I was bringing up two different issues here.

1) STID was BAD. Part of it was because they shoved in superfluous characters to make feminists happy. (Not all of it, but some, apparently. All I know about this is from my friend who hated this movie’s guts.)

2) The Bechdel test is stupid and the whole awareness raising thing doesn’t make sense. I don’t think anyone’s going to seriously rate movies based on this, but even the concept is weird.

I think part of the thing that gets me annoyed is that if you look in the wrong places, you find all kinds of people expecting that if your favorite movie doesn’t pass the test, just dump your Blu-rays in the bin! It’s kind of pathetic. But maybe it’s just me- as long as the movie is good, I really don’t care what types of chromosomes the main characters have.

Part of it was because they shoved in superfluous characters to make feminists happy.

No, that wasn’t it. They were trying to incorporate as many “The Wrath of Khan” elements as they could, and the extra characters came with that. But it just came off as a bunch of hodgepodge elements thrown together, with none of them very fleshed out. Or even making any sense (the magical tribble?). Not to mention, The Wrath of Khan’s already been done.

I don’t think anyone’s going to seriously rate movies based on this, but even the concept is weird.[…]…you find all kinds of people expecting that if your favorite movie doesn’t pass the test, just dump your Blu-rays in the bin!

The concept being female characters universally not being developed beyond their association with other characters? Definitely weird. And like I said, the point is not to rate the media in question, or label it as “no good” and throw it out. I’ve seen it pointed out that almost all of Pixar’s movies don’t pass the Bechdel test, and I don’t think anyone would say they are no good because of that. I certainly don’t. Because that isn’t the point.

Frankenstein by Marry Shelly is a great classic.

There are tons of great books, but the definition of clean is subjective.

The new, new Hobbit trailer? Like for the second movie? No, I haven’t.

(BTW, I can’t believe there are going to be 3 movies anyway. I mean, seriously.)

I didn’t see the first movie, either. I don’t know why, but I like the books better than the movies. Maybe it’s because I watched them when I was younger. My friend (the trekkie) says I’m insane.

I’ll get back to you after I watch it, but how about what in particular?

there’s a fantastic series of books called The Tapestry – The Hound of Rowan, The Second Siege, The Fiend and the Forge, The Maelstrom (the last book is coming out in October).

To clarify the issue, if the author is deliberately putting his kfira beliefs into his stories, they should not be read (think Phillip Pullman). However, reading stories that reference other religions, pagan or monotheistic is fine, as long as the reader is aware it’s just a story (although you should be careful with pagan religions that are made up). For instance, the Roman Mysteries series is set in Rome, which was a pagan culture – but that has nothing to do with the plotline.

I am more bothered by decency issues

I have read all Christopher Paolonis books and have really enjoyed them.

if you are talking about the inheritance cycle (and i assume you mean Christopher Paolini), you can hardly say that in the last couple of books there are NO decency issues. so are you saying that that level is mutter?

im not saying that those issues bother me, but there are some people that it would. i know someone who bought the last 2 books and went through them with a permanent marker before giving them to thier teenage son. im just pointing out that there are different levels for everyone.

so again, is that a level that you are willing to accept? and do you want people do give you suggestions based on that?

🙂 Bump 🙂

OOM: Hmmm… so they’ve got another throwaway token female character. Zippitydoodah.

You notice, also, that they have Legolas in it.

Movie fan pandering.

I do try not to judge movies solely on whether they’re AS GOOD as the books they are based on, but that’s not really the issue I had with them- I just hated all those disgusting monsters and battle scenes… I’m more of a light comedy type.

*ducks for cover*

I was also twelve years old…

But from what I understand, this is a bit lighter (which makes sense, as The Hobbit is about ten times lighter than LotR, both literally and figuratively), so I’ll probably check it out over the summer.

iBump: I just finished (for the third time) Les Miserables, which has 19 chapters entirely describing the full, embellished history of Napoleon’s fall at Waterloo. It also has an entire book’s worth (the whole work is divided into five volumes, each of which is divided into books, each of which is divided into chapters- yeah) of background on a character whose only contribution to the book is to give a pair of candlesticks to the main character. It’s also one of my favorite books of all time, so yeah, I can deal with 150 pages of grass.

Hmmm… so they’ve got another throwaway token female character. Zippitydoodah.

Movie fan pandering.

Come on. You can’t make those judgments until you’ve seen the two movies. You have no idea what their roles will be.

Another thing: yes, you can look at it from the perspective of yeah they just put her in because otherwise people would grumble that there aren’t any female characters–and maybe you’re right that that was the primary reason for the inclusion of her role. And yes, you can look at Legolas’ inclusion as “movie fan pandering.” In my opinion, you are missing out by looking at things through this perspective. If you want to make a critical analysis of a book-to-film adaptation, you have to look at things from a storytelling perspective–and I think that from a storytelling perspective, the devices you are criticizing make more sense than you credit them with.

First off: they are trying to adapt a good book into a good movie. To adapt a story successfully from one medium to another, you really have to reinvent a lot of the storytelling mechanics. Obviously, you have to be careful to capture the essence of the original narrative–but if you try a straight text-to-screen adaptation, you surely will not capture it. The directors and writers of The Hobbit movies decided to do this by expanding the narrative and adding some more non-action sequences (in the first movie, the scene with Galadriel and Saruman). In my opinion, this balances the yay swashbuckling adventures with their more serious context (which may have been Tolkien’s intent–see my next point).

Also, another thing to keep in mind is that he’s not trying to just adapt The Hobbit, which is really just about Bilbo’s adventures, he’s trying to incorporate the larger context that is hinted at in the piece “The Quest of Erebor”–the implications the quest held for the rest of Middle Earth. As far as the first movie goes, any the non-book content was exclusively dedicated to developing this. Dunno how the next one will turn out, but I am quite willing to accept the extra characters and seemingly un-Bilbo related action in light of the good job they did with the first one.

Also, stam, as far as book adaptations go, this is the closest I’ve ever seen to a close-to-the-book adaptation that was still a good (fantastic, really) film.

So basically, what I’m saying is while your complaints may have validity,

(a) They are irrelevant if the extra elements make it a better movie, and

(b) This may be more in line with Tolkien’s ideas regarding The Hobbit than a sticking-to-the-book adaptation would be.