Rambles and Potok's "The Chosen"

You know the feeling you get when you go back and read something that greatly influenced your life. You think "oh, that's where that came from!".

I get this a lot when I look at books like:
The Valley of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Westmark Trilogy and The Iron Ring by Lloyd Alexander
Narnia
The Blonde Night of Germany by Raymond Toliver and Trevor Constable
Just to name a few that have had obvious influences on me in my youth. ;-)

Or movies like:
Life is Beautiful
Scarlet Pimpernel (Anthony Andrews)
Beautiful Mind

The Mayflower Voyagers: This is America Charlie Brown :-)
The Pianist
and more...

Or songs like:
Bob Dylan's Forever Young
Trail Band's Boatman
Jimmy Gaudreau, Bennett, and Auldridge's This Old Town and We Live in Two Different World's Dear
And of course Mundi Klein, especially his High Sierra, And the Band Played "Waltzing Matilda", and Leaving Nancy.
and hundreds more, I'm sure....

Well, the point is you can go back to something that you read, listened to, or watched and see the obvious ways it has influenced you, even if you didn't like it all that much.
I especially think our characters often reflect the characters we fell in love with when we were younger.

I got this very odd sensation while I was reading The Chosen. Not just the characters and plot, but parts of the actual style (mostly the parts I didn't like) reminded me of myself and my writing. It was like "oh, that's where that came from...uh wait...".
So over all, it was a very unusual experience.
I only wish that I could be such a genius. :-)

My main criticism for The Chosen are just stylistic things. I think the only reason they bugged me so much was because there were problems I have (and I don't have his good qualities to counter balance them). The issues were more opinion related things and were low key in this sort of literary novel.

I loved this novel. Really loved it.

I thought I'd expound on that because I could go on and on, but I find that maybe I should go find something to eat or take a nap. There is nothing left in my head.

If you've read it or want to discuss it, contact me. I'd love to talk about it, when I have a brain. :-)

Thanks for reading,
Miss Pickwickian