Here, have a list of books

Someone linked me to an image, “Top 10 Books I Want My Kids To Read”. It’s now a dead link, but this isn’t about that particular list anyway.

The books on the list were not children’s books. They were books the author hoped his children would read, eventually. How, then, does such a list differ from “Ten Books I Would Recommend To Anyone”?

1. You might choose books that act on the mind, hoping they will help fulfill your parental responsibility.
2. You might choose books that tell your kids who you are, and why.
3. You might choose books that are special to your family.

I guess in the first category, I’d pick some of these:

• Silas Marner by George Eliot. It’s not superb, but good enough, and it’s about how what you do changes you morally, even if your motives have nothing in particular to do with morality. Morality tales that resonate with one person often ring hollow to the next person, so this is no slam dunk.
• A Tale of Two Cities. Amazing.
• The Gospel of Luke. It’s just good, and the message is about love.
• The Handbook of Epictetus. (However, I do also recommend this every time anyone asks for book recommendations.)

I’m tempted to put in a pair books about science and how it works. Maybe The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan and the book I’m reading now, The Firmament of Time by Loren Eiseley. But I’m not sure those rise to the level of the others, and it’s not like I’m well read enough in this area to make good picks.

In the second category:

• Ox-Cart Man. This book tells more about me than anything. All the nerd stuff you see in my life is window dressing; the implicit moral background to this poem is where I’m really coming from. (Sorry to disappoint you!)
• The Handbook of Epictetus. This again? Yes.
• The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. I don’t know if I should recommend this. I haven’t tried to read it lately. I read it at an impressionable age and was impression’d.
• Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. If you can square this pick with the Heinlein pick, you understand me better than I do.

This list doesn’t make a very flattering self-portrait. I’m moralistic but I’m not sure what is right.

In the third category:

• The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. Rhyme and reason for all ages.
• The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber. Rich verbal liquor in a fairy-tale-shaped container, and not a moral in sight.

That is only nine.

I don’t think any book I’ve ever read is indispensable, but books are indispensable.