I’ve been thinking a lot about my reading choices these past few weeks. I started the year with the goal of reading around the USA with The Book Girls, and I made it three and a half months before rethinking my commitment to reading books that I thought might be more about particular places. I’ve never had trouble abandoning a book, and I’ve never had trouble rereading one again and again and again.
Reading Around the USA seemed fun – like it was going to be an adventure – but in many cases, I found that the recommended books hardly mentioned place, and when I read to learn about a place, I thrive on rich descriptions that take me to settings that appeal to all five senses like I felt when I was walking the streets of Mitford Village with Jan Karon. What others find to be amazing bestsellers not to be missed, I often find blah at best, reading the obscure books on the shelf and finding that they outshine the popular books where my taste is concerned.
I’m looking forward to a book club coming this summer through Ethicalela.com, which will feature a variety of professional books, poetry, and fiction. My reading goal will shift toward reading books with the people I connect with and write with each month. We’ll gather by Zoom and discuss our reading. The hosts and monthly books will be announced in June.
I thought back this week over the books I enjoyed as a young child, and these were the top ten as I remember them, in no particular order beyond 1-4, but 1-4 are solidly in order of preference. These are the books that shaped me as I became a reader, the ones that had me wanting to write so much that I began writing the names of the color crayons in the covers of my books by looking at the letters on the crayon wrapper. Perhaps you also loved some of these.
10. Clifford the Big Red Dog by Norman Bridwell
9. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
8. A Taste of Blackberries by Doris Buchanan Smith
7. Queenie Peavy by Robert Burch
6. The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
5. Happiness Is by Charles M. Schultz
4. Childcraft Volume 2: Stories and Fables
3. Tibor Gergely’s Great Big Book of Bedtime Stories
2. A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Childcraft Volume 1: Poems and Rhymes
Please share your favorite childhood books and a book you’d recommend that you’ve read recently in the comments. Currently, I’m reading The Midnight Library by Matt Haig and The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise by Dan Gemeinhart.
Happy Reading!
Common Threads 