In Awe of Books
In my 50+ years of reading books there are those that stand far and above all others. They are the books that when you read them you almost can't catch your breath. There have been a few of those in the past few years for me. I remember Cold Mountain that I could barely read a chapter at a time. It was so rich and awesome and filled with the world. Then there was Peace Like a River that oh so surely led one into the miracle of faith.

On that listing in the right sidebar are some wonderful and excellent books. But none this year has been like Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union. As I read it I am awed by the pace and detail and language. He builds an alternative universe in Sitka, Alaska, as a Jewish homeland after Israel didn't make it in 1948. But now it's about to revert to Alaska and the Jews will wander again.

Into the midst of this comes a murder and a down-and-out Jewish detective and his ex-wife and black-hatted chasids and... well, it is remarkable. And completely believable. It is genre fiction raised to literature- and vice versa. I don't know if an author can win more than one Pulitzer Prize (Chabon won for The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay) but if he can- he should. I am not yet done with the book, but I am devouring it. I don't often do that with books. I usually have two or three going at a time. But this one is just so good I don't want to get in its way by dividing my attention.