The Chosen

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1. wencOct 2019
   This is actually a good strategy.

   I first came across a similar technique expounded in a book by Chaim Potok, "The Chosen" (good book, I really enjoyed it).

   One of the protagonists, Danny Saunders, was the son of a rabbi and a genius who was trying to become a psychologist, so he started reading Freud in its original form. He found the texts impenetrable even after months of trying.

   Then he had an insight: in the study of the Torah (his forte, being a rabbi's son), folks typically studied with the help of commentaries by rabbis over the generations who have disputed and explained the texts in different ways. Commentaries provide context and a jumping off point into the text. So Danny Saunders took the same approach to studying Freud -- instead of reading Freud, he studied commentaries on Freud and read what has already been said about him. This helped him understand the original work better.

   Many of us do the same instinctively: we read the Wikipedia article on a subject to get a lay of the land before jumping into a subject matter. Context is valuable in pedagogy, which is why it's often helpful to have an instructor for reading hard books -- otherwise anyone would be able to read any book in their language and "get it" -- which is not true. I read English just fine, but I don't think I'm able to understand Finnegan's Wake without any help.

   p.s. We often hear advice that we should study texts in their original form without commentary, so that we can approach the subject with an unbiased lens and interpret it for ourselves. But my take is our lens is always biased, and worse still, in subject areas we are unfamiliar with, our biases are uninformed. I think a much more productive approach is to read with commentary but to read critically -- to question and to explore alternative interpretive options. Without this kind of approach, most important works are just too difficult and we'd probably just not try.

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2. tokenadultNov 2012
   The Chosen by Chaim Potok.

   http://www.amazon.com/Chosen-Chaim-Potok/dp/0449213447

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3. tokenadultJun 2011
   Best novel about growing up is The Chosen by Chaim Potok.

   http://www.amazon.com/Chosen-Chaim-Penguin-Modern-Classics/d...

   I got a LOT out of that when I reread it at least thirty years after reading it the first time.

   Best nonfiction book full of amazing facts and insights into the human condition I didn't know before I read the book is The Nature of Paleolithic Art by R. Dale Guthrie.

   http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Paleolithic-Art-Dale-Guthrie/dp...

   There are bunch of others I could remember, but these two in particular took me by surprise by being much better than I would have guessed they would be when I first picked them up.

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4. tokenadultNov 2010
   I was assigned to read Brave New World in high school. I had already read it at home, as it was in the collection of books my parents had in our house when I was growing up. The term "savages" occurs in the book to make a comment about the persons speaking the term, not to make a comment about the persons described as savages.

   The best book I was assigned to read in high school was The Chosen by Chaim Potok. I later read most of Potok's other books on my own. A few years ago I reread The Chosen--that is a very fine book for a reader of any age.

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5. tokenadultSep 2010
   My children like the George R. R. Martin books, the Philip Pullman books, the Harry Potter series, and other books much in that genre category. They also read "classic" literature as they get older, for example Oliver Twist or Tom Sawyer. Two of my sons have really liked A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (which I have never read) and I really liked The Chosen by Chaim Potok (which I reread a few years ago, and still thought was very good).
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6. tokenadultApr 2010
   I generally agree that voluntary reading is better for the reader than assigned reading. And yet I must give my tenth grade English teacher in Wisconsin credit for assigning me to read The Chosen by Chaim Potok,

   http://www.amazon.com/Chosen-Chaim-Potok/dp/0449213447

   a wonderful book that acquainted me with the author, whose subsequent books are also well worth reading.

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