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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11507.My_Name_Is_Asher_Lev?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="My Name Is Asher Lev" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1216910027m/11507.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11507.My_Name_Is_Asher_Lev?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">My Name Is Asher Lev</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7385.Chaim_Potok">Chaim Potok</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/21687253?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/> <em><a target="_blank" href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781400031047-5">My Name is Asher Lev</a></em> by Chaim Potok is a book that I really should list in my favorites, but I always seem to forget it, maybe because I read it some years ago. The story is of an Orthodox teenager who discovers his love for art and his talent for it. To follow this vocation, however, he must leave, both literally and metaphorically, his Orthodox roots and be an outcast from his family and community. It is the story of a man who in seizing who he really is must learn how to recast his former self for his new one. <br/> <br/>This is the book that let me know I was an artist (and I use that term with a little "a," lest you think I'm comparing myself to Picasso or something - Picasso was an Artist.) The longing that Asher feels for his painting is that pinprick of tenacity I feel in my spirit about writing, when I let myself feel it and don't deaden it with my own or other people's expectations of me. Asher's life is every artist's life, and this book gave me the courage to live my own life. <br/> <br/>After I read Asher Lev and it's sequel, <em>The Gift of Asher Lev</em>, I then read every single thing by Chaim Potok except <em>The Wanderings</em>, which I own but in a copy that is barely holding together. The Asher Lev books are, in my opinion, the best books he wrote, but the others are all good as well, especially if you're a person of faith coming to understand that in deep, devout but original ways. <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/52752?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>