I’m living the bachelor life for the next three days. My wife and son will be relaxing at the cabin while I stay in the city and go to work. Being thrust back into the bachelor life, its got me thinking about being a grown-up. For instance, being a grown-up means one shouldn’t eat a whole box of President’s Choice Louisiana-style Hot-wings dipped in blue cheese dressing all by one’s self. That’s just not right. A grown-up should not be doing that.
Anyway, these thoughts of grown-up-ness (or lack thereof — maybe it’s just maleness) reminded me of a list I wanted to generate, Books I Never Read When I Was a Kid and Wish I Had. “Kid” being defined for this list’s purposes as below the age of eighteen. “Grown-Up”, well, let’s decide that some other time, I don’t have the stomach for it.
Books I Never Read When I Was a Kid and Wish I Had
- A Wrinkle In Time
- Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain
- Peter Pan
- Don Quixote
- The Lord of The Rings (shocking, I know, I only liked The Hobbit)
- Robinson Crusoe
- The Jungle Book
- Watership Down
- Pretty much everything by G.K. Chesterton
- Ditto for Dostoevsky (I was boycotting pre-twentieth century fiction)
- More Ray Bradbury (that’s a good reading list item for any age)
And some of your suggestions
- Pride and Prejudice
- Great Expectations
- Anna Karenina
- The Wind in the Willows
- Something by Eleanor Farjeon
- The Princess Bride
Feel free to jog my memory with your own “wished I coulda read it” items in the comments section. If any of our missed ’ems match up I’ll add them to the list.
I hope my wife left me Tums in the house.
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