Skip to main content

Meme: Top Ten Books I Wish I'd Read as a Kid

The Top Ten Tuesdays meme is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Show your appreciation by clicking on this link and checking out some more book lists on the other participating blogs.

This is a tough one, since I didn’t really read English at any kind of proficiency until my teens, so I really should list Icelandic books. However, few if any of my readers will have heard of any of them, so instead I will list books in English I wish I could have read as a kid. Some were available in translation, so theoretically I could have read them, while others were not.

(Later I may draw up a list of children’s books written after I grew up which I would love to have read as a child).

  • Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. Such a wonderful children’s book. I hope it gets translated so Icelandic kids can enjoy it.
  • Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce. I loved the movie and liked the book and would have liked to have discovered it as a child.
  • A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I loved The Secret Garden, which I did read as a child, but I was an adult when I read this one and I found the little princess just too much of a goody two-shoes to like her. I would love to have been able to form an opinion of it as a child.
  • At least one Nancy Drew book. They were available in Icelandic translations, but somehow I came to think they were about some wussy, fuzzy girl and never read them. Still haven’t, but maybe I should sample one.
  • The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Read it as a teenager, liked it then, would in all likelihood have loved it as much as The Hobbit had I read it earlier.
  • Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren. I didn’t like Pippi when I read the books as a teenager, but I loved everything I read by Lindgren as a child. Ergo, I probably would have loved Pippi as well.
  • A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. It is a very good introduction to science fiction and just overall a good book.
  • Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume. I think I was agnostic from the time I could think rationally, but I didn’t dare admit it until I was an adult. This book might have helped me see it was okay to say it out loud.
  • Anything by Roald Dahl, especially Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I still haven’t read Matilda, but love the movie, and the other I liked when I read it not many years ago, but I would really have loved it as a child.
  • I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. This is a good read for older kids, especially girls. I loved it as an adult but it would probably have become as much of a treasure to me as Anne of Green Gables did had I read it when I was younger.

Comments

I would have liked to read the Narnia books too :D

thanks for stopping by my blog :)
Majanka said…
I forgot all about The Little Princess. I think I saw a movie about that novel once, and I loved it, but I never came across the novel. You should definately go and read Matilda!
Stephen said…
I read a few Judy Blume novels as a kid, but not "Are You There, God?". I recall enjoying them.
Anonymous said…
here's mine http://tributebooksmama.blogspot.com/2011/01/top-ten-tuesday-top-10-best-debut-books.html
Anonymous said…
I actually have I Capture the Castle on my shelf to read atm! I keep hearing so many wonderful things about it
I am so thrilled that I am having an international day on the book blogs today. First South Africa, then Belgium, and now Iceland. What fun.

I really like your list. I do wish they'd had Judy Blume when I was younger. I think I really needed her.

Blessing on you today!

Anne
My Head is Full of Books
Red said…
Matilda was one of my favorite books growing up. I have A Wrinkle in Time on my list as well.
jayme said…
I never had heard of I Capture the Castle until I was an adult. I'll have to add it to my list of books to look in to.
Julia said…
Seriously?! Dahl wrote Matilda?! This is like the third time this week Dahl has come up in conversation and the third time my mind has been blown because "He wrote that too?"

Great list.
Enbrethiliel said…
+JMJ+

If you want to try just one Nancy Drew book, my absolute favourite (and one I know lots of other readers love and remember well) is The Hidden Staircase. It's the second book, but you don't really need to have read the previous volume first. Nancy starts with a clean slate in every book. =P
Bibliophile said…
Thanks for the recommendation, Enebrethiliel. I will check and see if I can find it.

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went and

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove