This week over at the Broke and Bookish the theme for Top Ten Tuesday is:
‘Top 10 Books From My Childhood (Or teen years) That I Would Love To Revisit’
Since I am constitutionally unable to pass an opportunity to talk about the books/series I love, I’m going to take up this meme. 🙂
1. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll — This one is still one of my favorites, as anyone who’s seen my Alice collection can attest. I have more than a hundred different copies of it with different illustrations or translations.
2. The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper — My fourth grade teacher recommended I read The Grey King. I was hooked and I read the series multiple times over my childhood and even as an adult.
3. The Black Cauldron series by Lloyd Alexander — My mother read this series to me as a kid. I loved it.
4. Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers — My favorite Peter Wimsey book. Peter’s under-cover in an ad agency. It’s brilliant and holds up to several re-reads.
5. Rum Pum Pum by Maggie Duff — This is an Indian fairy tale about a crow who is seeking vengeance against the corrupt king and allies he picks up along the way.
6. My Mother Sends Her Wisdom by Louise McClenathan and Rosekrans Hoffman — This is a Russian folk tale, I believe. And it has a great message about planning and listening.
7. Albert Campion series by Margery Allingham — Allingham is actually my favorite of the big three female mystery authors of the time (Sayers, Christie, & Allingham). You don’t hear much about her though, which is a shame. (And the tv series is pretty good too.)
8. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis — Aslan was very important to my childhood. I loved the first book much more than the others. (The Last Battle didn’t happen in my world. Though, I’ll still read it.) And you *must* read the series in the original published order. The chronological order doesn’t work because if you don’t know the information from the first book, you don’t *care* about the rest of them.
9. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien — My mother first read this to me when I was a toddler. Then, about once every two years between other series. I’ve read it a good four or five times myself. (I’ve even read and annotated the appendices.)
10. The Nero Wolf series by Rex Stout — Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin are my go-to detectives. I enjoy their interactions. I love Archie’s voice. And the mysteries themselves are always nice and twisty, but Stout always gives you all the clues you need to get to the right answer.
BitterSuites 
Okay, now I kind of want to make you do one where you can only list children’s or teen books. Because I’m mean and I like to give you challenges.
Oh you wench. I didn’t *read* those…. *grimaces* Oh, geez, let’s see if I can do that.
Okay, so I’ll add… substitute the below into the list. (The Black Cauldron is on the line between.)
3. The Vesper Holly series by Lloyd Alexander — A female adventurer. As wikipedia says: “Vesper is young and wild; not at all the proper Victorian schoolgirl. Alexander describes her as having “the digestive talents of a goat and the mind of a chess master. She is familiar with half a dozen languages and can swear in all of them.”
4. Hunger from the Riders of the Apocalypse series by Jackie Morse Kessler — Obviously, I didn’t read this one as a kid, but it’s a fascinating magical realism world.
7. Nana Upstairs, Nana Downstairs by Tomie dePaola
9. Hardy Boys Casefile #29: Thick as Thieves by Franklin W Dixon.
10. The 3 Investigators series
Okay, that was painfully hard and my brain hurts now.