Favorite books, Part I

Preliminarily, I must say that I am only up to 1999 in my lists and there are just TOO DAMN MANY...so I'm going to first write about the ones I remember from childhood, and why they are my favorites:

These Happy Golden Years--Laura Ingalls Wilder
I love all of these, but this is my favorite. I could read it once a month and still love it. My next favorite is The First Four Years , and then Little House on the Prairie or On the Banks of Plum Creek . I'm a complete nut about Laura Ingalls Wilder...used to think I was her, reincarnated. After all, our names are (almost) the same. The values and mores in these books are ones to attempt to live up to, in spite of the datedness of some of the imagery.

Narnia books--C.S. Lewis
Of course, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ("the land of Spare Oom, the country of Ward Robe"), but I also really liked The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Eustace is such a putz and I loved the Dufflepuds/Monopods). I've read them all to my son, probably at too early an age, but by God he still remembers them! We giggle about them frequently; he just mentioned the Dufflepuds to me Monday, in fact. I just read somewhere recently that someone liked this series till they realized it was "Christian propaganda" (his words). Get over it--they are good stories whether or not they are allegorical (not propaganda--hmph).

Nancy Drew--Carolyn Keene
If you are an American female born between 1920 and about 1968, these were a must-read. I loved Nancy. My mother loved Nancy (we had a first edition of the first book of the series!). I thought I was George (my sister's nickname for me), but I knew I'd never tolerate Bess in my life...except now I know several Besses, and I tolerate them just fine. But, I still want a roadster.

Treasure in the Covered Wagon--Vera Graham
I read this book over and over and over. It's about the trip from Missouri to Oregon in the 1840s that so many settlers made. I just reread it last fall; it is horrendously dated, didactic and racist. My memories of it are about picking up buffalo chips for fire and, primarily, about a wagon being dropped off a cliff and the people having to pick up all their belongings and cram in with other families for the remaider of the trip.

Alice in Wonderland--Lewis Carroll
While in my early 20s, I reread this book annually, religiously. I love it. I don't know why; the sequel doesn't do anything for me much. Maybe it's because my mother wouldn't read it (she doesnt read books where animals talk...hmph), and it's a rebellion thing...? Anyway, I love Alice growing so big she's cramjammed in the house, and the baby turning into a pig and the rabbit scurrying about saying, "I'm late. Oh dear, I'm late."

A Wrinkle in Time--Madeleine L’Engle
I can't read this too many times either, although I'm not as obsessive about it as Alice . I just like this family of misfits and dysfunctionals that is such a perfect example of family love.

Charlie & the Chocolate Factory--Roald Dahl
Have you read this book recently?? Talk about a subversive book about how awful adults are! There are damn few decent people in this book. Which, of course, is why kids like it; they know that we're all creeps and hypocrites under our skins. Dahl got it just right.

The Hiding Place--Corrie ten Boom
I read this book when I was around age 11. It is probably the one book that influences my life almost daily. For those who haven't read it or heard the story, it is the true story of a family of Dutch watchmakers who hid and served as a courier point for Jews during the German occupation of World War II. Corrie and her sister Betsy and her 70ish-year-old father are "too old" to get involved in this. But they do it anyway, and are eventually arrested and sentenced to work camps. Corrie and Betsy are sent to Ravensbruck, where Betsy dies (their father dies elsewhere), but Corrie is released just before the end of the war. This was my introduction to the horror of World War !!, something that shatters me anew every time I examine that period of history. I have not read this in probably 20 years; I should get another copy (mine fell apart, crappy paperback that it was: yellow with a red swastika on it, with the gates of the camp behind the symbol, and lots of blurbs from reviewers--amazing that I can picture it so clearly).

What I remember about this book...Corrie asking her father about "sex sin" around 1900 (when she was about 12), the triangle signal in the window of the watch shop, Corrie being unable to take her pre-packed bag to prison for fear of giving away the door to the hiding place, her discussions of theology with the Nazi warden at her first prison, her "addiction" to toilet-paper playing cards, the bottomless vitamin bottle at Ravensbruck. being thankful for lice (yes, lice) in the barracks, dropping your jaw to keep your eardrums from breaking during bombardment...

Fifty-year-old spinsters and their father as heroes? How improbable. What an introduction to God's typical weird sense of rightness-in-wrongness.

Winnie-the-Pooh and Now We Are Six--A.A. Milne
I still have these books, crappy 34-year-old paperbacks that they are, because my sister annotated them for me, writing things like "This picture looks like Mommy when she was a girl. Tell her to find her picture and show it to you sometime." Yes, I can quote verbatim: "Is this [poem] about our Anne [another sister's baby]?" My sister was in college at the time, having taught me to read before going away [see below]. Guess what--she turned into a librarian when she grew up and finished her adventures in college and in Africa.

Other books I remember: the Beany Malone series (set in Denver, I had to read it. My mom made me). Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, and Mrs. Pickerell. The Hardy Boys (I read most of the series when I wasn't reading Nancy Drew). The Mouse and the Motorcycle. The Little House (now I'm really back in time!) by Virginia Burton. The book my sister used to teach me to read: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

That's a good start. It's late, I'm tired.