Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time

On By Erin @ Cracker Crumb LifeIn Uncategorized

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Today’s Prompt: Books I wish I could read again for the first time

Do you remember the books that made you love words and writing and books, landscapes and characters, books that stopped time as you read them? That formed your thoughts and helped you escape? I feel like those are the books I would like to read again, that had such a profound effect on my life as I grew up. To feel that magic all over again.

A Prayer for Owen Meany || The Prince of Tides || All Creatures Great and Small

These three books were given to me by my mom, my dad, and my uncle, and I think that helped make them special as well. My mom gave me the whole James Herriot collection when I was probably 10ish, and I adored them. I didn’t always understand them, but it didn’t matter. I understood what these stories represented – kindness, love, and caring for all of our creatures that we share this planet with.

The Prince of Tides was a book given to me by my dad. He loves Pat Conroy (and now me too!) and despite some tough subject matter I was wrapped up in this world. I remember I even stayed home “sick” from school one day so I could finish it. I went on to read the rest of his books, and each were as amazing but none could take the place of Prince of Tides.

A Prayer for Owen Meany was from my uncle. Another book that has stayed with me all through my life, that I think about all the time. I wish I could read it again just to see how masterfully Irving had the ending all planned, right from the very beginning.

The Lake of Dead Languages || King’s Oak || On the Banks of Plum Creek

The Lake of Dead Languages was Dark Academia before that was a thing. I remember reading it and thinking about how I wanted to throw myself into academia the way that these girls did – minus the big secret in this book of course. I love Carol Goodman still, she was my entrance into a world beyond my little town in Michigan, that was all about steel mills and auto factories.

King’s Oak took me down south again, this time introducing me to Tom Dabney, a character I would love to meet and hang out with. Like Luke in the Prince of Tides, he burned a bit too brightly for his world.

On the Banks of Plum Creek of course has to be on here. Who didn’t want to be Laura when they were younger? All those adventures and animals and running wild and living in a sod house! What! I thought that was the coolest thing ever.

Franny and Zooey || Remembering Blue || Charlotte’s Web || The Great Gatsby

Franny and Zooey was probably the first book by a classic author that I read and really loved. I know Salinger gets a bad rap but I always liked his work. Franny and Zooey is my favorite though.

Remembering Blue is just like a lovely romantic sad fairy tale. I attended a writing class, a small group of maybe 10 other people, with my dad at Connie May Fowler’s house in Florida (her husband made us dinner!) and it was so cool to talk with her about this book. I wish I wouldn’t have been so young honestly when I went; I feel like I could make more of the whole experience now as an adult. It was an awesome time though.

Charlotte’s Web. Yes, I know reading it all over again for the first time will be tragic but it still makes me cry anyway. Just the love that was in these pages between Charlotte and Wilbur. I read it with Wyatt a few years ago, and it struck me just how much Charlotte was like a mother to Wilbur, protecting him. And reading it with Wyatt for the first time was almost like reading it again myself for the first time, as I was reading it with a different perspective.

The Great Gatsby is another one of the first classics that I read and loved. I wanted to go back and live in the Roaring ’20s so badly, to be a flapper and dance all night in a fringed dress.

And that is it. These books worked magic on me that is not lost, but it would be amazing to feel that first wonder all over again.

44 thoughts on “Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time”

  3. I really cannot remember if I’ve read the Charlotte’s Web book or the Laura Ingalls Wilder stories. But I think I would like to read them even if only for nostalgia. I love the All Creatures Great and Small TV show so maybe someday I’ll consider reading one of them. 🙂 Thanks for visiting my list today!

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  5. As I said on Lisa’s post, I don’t know if I could even answer this question as I do re-read quite a bit and don’t even think it makes a different to me if the magic is still right (which it luckily mostly is).
    With special books, I don’t have to read them to get that feeling. I love what Anne wrote “hard to imagine not having it inside me all along”.
    Charlotte’s Web will never not make me cry. I call the spiders in my house Harry (no idea why) or Charlotte if they stay around in the same spot for a bit.

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    1. I do reread some books. I reread Little House, Watership Down, all the time. And Watership Down will never not feel magical to me. But for me, it is that new discovery that it felt like, of learning of somewhere new, what that life was like, that story. And I will always know it, and so it is comforting, and that is its own magic. But it is different compared to new magic. If that makes sense.

      We have a new pet that we rescued from a pet shop. You will see it later this week if you haven’t on IG already.

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  6. Joanne's avatar Joanne

    Oh yes, I LOVED Charlotte’s Web! There have been some books I really loved as a tween that I went back and read and were bummed that while I did enjoy them they just didn’t hold up as well the second time around (which definitely could have something to do with my age).

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    1. I love it too!! I think it was such a great book, and I loved reading it with Wyatt a few years ago. We took a trip and stayed at an Airbnb on a farm while we were reading it too – it was just a fun moment. 🙂 And sometimes they don’t hold up to my memories either – I assume the same thing. Lol

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  9. lesscher's avatar lesscher

    I’ve read A Prayer for Owen Meany twice and it was just as good the second time as the first! I’ve never read The Prince of Tides (loved the movie, though), but I’ve always wanted to re-read Beach Music. That book may be in my lifetime Top 10 list, it’s so good!

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  14. Thanks for stopping by my blog and commenting! I never read Pat Conroy until we did a family book swap one year at Christmas and my sister-in-law put a copy in the swap because she loved it, and it surprised me how much I liked it!

    There are many on your list that I could have put on mine! Franny and Zooey (which I read not knowing much about the author); All Creatures Great and Small; The Great Gatsby, and the Little House on the Prairie books, which I read many times.

    I’m pretty sure I’ve read The Lake of Dead Languages, but I don’t remember it, so now I need to look it up and maybe reread it! I love the Dark Academia genre!

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    1. Pat Conroy was so talented at writing tragic families in the south, or even just tragic stories, but I loved them. His writing is beautiful.

      I think I read Franny and Zooey the same way! I didn’t know much about what I was reading and I loved it.

      I love all of Carol Goodman’s books, but The Lake of Dead Languages is my hands down favorite.

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  16. Any book you read is always read is always read by you for the first time. If you think you have read it before, it was a different version of you who read it. Humans are incessantly shifting in perspectives, so “re-reading” a book is always going to add more value.

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      1. That is me, but with Animal Farm. As a teenager, in India, I was fascinated by how accurately it portrayed our leaders as the pig. As an older person, who is a cog in the wheel of a fortune 500, I need to remind myself that being Boxer isn’t the way to rise up the corporate ladder.

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  18. I’ve read a number of these and smiled when you mentioned them. But I’ve never read “Owen Meany” and I think I may have to seek that one out. I recently reread “Stuart Little” and was overjoyed still. (I confess, I still have an emotional issue with mouse traps.)

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  21. I reread the Little House books … oh gosh, I guess it was maybe 10-12 years ago now? Maybe more, I can’t maths right now, lol … But it was so intriguing to read them as an adult and see how much they played a role in who I was. I set myself a treasure hunt task to get hardback copies of them all, to replace my tattered and taped together paperbacks, and now I want to reread them again, see how they hit differently now. 🙂

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