100th post

Instead of telling you 100 random things about myself, such as I rode on my university's equestrian team or that I once tied my brother to the top of the swing set by his belt loop, I've decided to list 100 of my some of my favorite books. This list is woefully incomplete (I'm sure I've forgotten some), and 100 isn't really enough to cover all my favorites. But it's a start. I'm sure that my (somewhat eccentric) reading list will tell you far more about me than 100 random facts. For organizational purposes, I've divided it into sets of 20, separated into different categories. Within each category, there is no order, just the order in which I came across them on the bookshelf. Oh, the (*) indicates that the book listed is the first of a series, so consider the whole series as a part of the list. Happy reading!

Children's Picture Books

1. Dogger - Shirley Hughes
2. The Seven Silly Eaters - Mary Ann Hoberman
3. Bread and Jam for Frances* - Russell Hoban
4. A House is a House for Me - Mary Ann Hoberman
5. Blueberries for Sal - Robert McCloskey
6. Tacky the Penguin* - Helen Lester
7. Where the Wild Things - Maurice Sendak
8. The Very Hungry Caterpillar - Eric Carle
9. Andrew Henry's Meadow - Doris Burn
10. Least of All - Carol Purdy
11. Elsie Piddock Skips in her Sleep - Eleanor Farjeon and Charlotte Voake
12. The Eleventh Hour - Graeme Base
13. Roxaboxen - Alice McLerran
14. Magic Schoolbus series* - Joanna Cole and Bruce Degan
15. Talking Like the Rain - X. J. Kennedy and Dorothy M. Kennedy, eds.
16. Joyful Noise: poems for 2 voices - Paul Fleischman and Eric Beddows
17. Paddle-to-the-Sea* - Holling C. Holling
18. Castle* - David Macauly
19. The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear - Don Wood
20. McDuff Moves In* - Rosemary Wells

Children's Chapter Books

21. Winnie-the-Pooh* - A. A. Milne
22. Chronicles of Narnia* - C. S. Lewis
23. Anne of Green Gables* - L. M. Montgomery
24. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
25. The Five Children and It* - E. Nesbitt
26. The Borrowers* - Mary Norton
27. A Wrinkle in Time* - Madeleine L'Engle
28. Swallows and Amazons* - Arthur Ransome
29. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH - Robert O'Brien
30. Little Women* - Louisa May Alcott
31. The Bronze Bow - Elizabeth George Speare
32. Johnny Tremain - Esther Forbes
33. The Door in the the Wall - Marguerite di Angeli
34. Ramona the Pest* - Beverly Cleary
35. Surviving the Applewhites - Stephanie S. Tolan
36. Mandy - Julie Edwards
37. Understood Betsy - Dorothy Canfield Fisher
38. The Four-Story Mistake* - Elizabeth Enright
39. Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators* - Robert Arthur (Not great literature, but wonderful memories of my mother reading them on car trips.)
40. Freckles* - Gene Stratton Porter

Fiction

41. House of Nicollo* - Dorothy Dunnett
42. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
43. anything by P. G. Wodehouse (especially his short stories)
44. Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries* - Dorothy Sayers
45. Make Way for Lucia* - E. F. Benson (This is the only time I will ever recommend reading a series out of order. If you've never read these, start with Mapp and Lucia.)
46. The Eyre Affair* - Jasper Fforde
47. Amelia Peabody mystery series* - Elizabeth Peters
48. Winter's Tale - Mark Helprin
49. Barsetshire series* - Angela Thirkell
50. Possession - A. S. Byatt
51. Morality Play - Barry Unsworth
52. A Year in Provence - Peter Mayle
53. Parnassus on Wheels - Christopher Morley
54. Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott
55. anything by Jane Austen
56. anything by Anthony Trollope
57. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
58. Palace Walk* - Naguib Mafouz
59. Les Miserable - Victor Hugo
60. God is an Englishman - R. F. Delderfield

Non-Fiction - General

61. Eats, Shoots and Leaves - Lynne Truss
62. House - Tracey Kidder
63. Made in America - Bill Bryson
64. The Singer of Tales - Albert B. Lord
65. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris
66. Blink - Malcolm Gladwell
67. Seabiscuit - Laura Hillenbrand
68. Eminent Dogs and Dangerous Men - Donald McCaig
69. Mere Christianity - C. S. Lewis
70. The Ever-Loving Truth - Voddie Baucham

Non-Fiction - Memoir

71. A Circle of Quiet - Madeleine L'Engle
72. L'Abri - Edith Schaeffer
73. Will Mrs. Major go to Hell? - Aloise Buckley Heath
74. The Art of Eating - M. F. K. Fisher
75. Cheaper by the Dozen - Frank B. Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth
76. Wild Swans - Jung Chang
77. Life Among the Savages - Shirley Jackson
78. Raising Demons - Shirley Jackson
79. 84 Charring Cross Road - Helen Hanff
80. God's Smuggler - Brother Andrew

Non-Fiction - Parenting/Family/Adoption/Homeschooling

81. Endangered Minds - Jane Healy
82. How Children Fail - John Holt
83. For the Children's Sake - Susan Schaeffer Macauley
84. The Hidden Art of Homemaking - Edith Schaeffer
85. What is a Family? - Edith Schaeffer
86. Family Driven Faith - Voddie Baucham
87. Unprotected - Miriam Grossman
88. Parenting in the Pew - Robbie Castleman
89. No Ordinary Home - Carol Brazos
90. Parenting the Hurt Child - Keck & Kupeckey
91. Attaching in Adoption - Deborah Gray
92. Nuturing Adoptions - Deborah Gray
93. Toddler Adoption: the weaver's craft - Mary Hopkins-Best
94. Becoming Attached - Robert Karen
95. The Power of Motherhood - Nancy Campbell
96. The Family Meal Table and Hospitality - Nancy Campbell
97. The Well-Trained Mind - Jesse Wise and Susan Wise Bauer
98. Family Matters: why homeschooling makes sense - David Guterson
99. Dumbing us Down - John Taylor Gatto
100. Passionate Housewives Desparate for God - Jennie Chancey and Stacey Campbell

Comments

LawMommy said…
Understood Betsy!! I cannot tell you how much I loved that book. I haven't thought about that book in years, but I think I read it 6 times the year I was 10...and the Borrowers! I just loved the Borrowers. (I used to write my own little stories about the characters in the Borrowers...before I became a boring grownup and learned about copyright law! :-) )

I would say about 35% of our favorite books match up.
2/14/2008 2:02 PM
Thankfulmom said…
This is a fantastic list! Thank you for sharing it.

Lisa
2/20/2008 12:30 AM
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