Looks like I have a lot of tabs open in Chrome. First up: books!

Another list of 100 books, but this time the books are those that influenced us as kids. I’ve read a lot of books on the list, but not all changed my world. These did, to one extent or another:

  • “The Phantom Tollbooth,” by Norton Juster
  • “Charlotte’s Web,” by E. B. White
  • “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” by Judy Blume
  • “A Wrinkle in Time,” by Madeleine L’Engle
  • The “Nancy Drew” books, by Carolyn Keene
  • “Jacob Have I Loved,” by Katherine Paterson
  • “Where the Wild Things Are,” by Maurice Sendak
  • Aesop’s Fables
  • “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” by Roald Dahl
  • “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” by Shel Silverstein
  • “Ramona Quimby, Age 8,” by Beverly Cleary
  • The dictionary

Most of these books I loved, but actually, I hated the dictionary. I never was able to convince my parents that it is awfully hard to look up a word when you don’t know how to spell it. My kids are lucky – they can just ask Google.

Other books on the list influenced me as an adult (e.g. the U.S. Constitution) while others I liked, even loved, but they didn’t “change my world.” And there are many important books missing from this list – The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, for example. And there are no comic books, either, like Chris Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men.