Compile a book list to leave your children.

Eddie Dane

Philosopher
Eddie Dane
Joined
Aug 18, 2007
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I'm sure that most here came across information in their life that made them go: "if only I had known this earlier"!

My wife is reading He's Just Not That Into You and remarked that this book could have saved her heaps of uncertainty and heartbreak in her teens and early twenties.

So I'm looking to compile a list of must reads for my two daughters that will give them essential information for successful, safe and happy living.

I'm thinking of the following areas:

* General knowledge
* History
* Money
* Work
* Love and relationships
* Psychology


I'm sure you can come up with more.

Up to now I have:

Ideas. Peter Watson
Because it gives an overview of human history as a succession of ideas, not a succession of conflicts.

The God Delusion. Richard Dawkins
You know why.

Clash Of the Civilisations. Huntington
Somewhat working model of conflicts between civilisations.
Good antidote against the Euro (or any) centrist viewpoint.

Flim Flam. Randi.
Spot the scammers

Art Of The Steal. Abagnale
Spot more scammers.

Van Crevelt: The Changing Face Of War
Helps to see the role of war in human society and helps to understand history and current events.

Cialdini. Influence
Because we have to deal with marketing and persuasion all our lives.

That's my list up to now.

So compile a list, or make one suggestion that you think important.
Basically say: what if I died and I could not be there to educate my children.
Instead I'd leave them a bookcase that should help them grow, be financially responsible, successful, happy, moral etc.

I eagerly await your suggestions to add to my reading list
 
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I think this is a cool idea.

How about including a list of the major religious books too, so they can get a look at the landscape and put it in context with your other suggestions:

The Bible (old and new testament, and Catholic Apocrypha)
The Koran
Bhagavad Gita
The Book of Mormon
Popol Vuh

Stuff like that.
 
At what age should they read them?
That's a good question.

I was thinking mostly stuff that would help them all their lives.

But I suppose the need something before that. So guess books for all ages.

Right now they are four and eighteen months.

Mind you, I'm also looking for books that would be good for me. You can see in my own preliminary list that I've gone for mostly the heavy stuff.

I'm a 38 year old guy, both my kids are girls.
 
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Eddie Dane said:
At what age should they read them?
That's a good question.

I was thinking mostly stuff that would help them all their lives.

But I suppose the need something before that. So guess books for all ages.

Right now they are four and eighteen months.

Mind you, I'm also looking for books that would be good for me. You can see in my own preliminary list that I've gone for mostly the heavy stuff.

I'm a 38 year old guy, both my kids are girls.
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Okay, my kids are 15 (girl) and 13 (boy). In my opinion and experience, it is much more important to teach them how to think and to get them to love reading, than what specific books they read. The idea of a list is a good one, but ultimately futile- because if you force them to read them, they will often as not be resistant to whatever it is you want them to take away from the books, and if you give them a choice, they will inevitably choose something other than what you suggest. Sometimes, something you might abhor.

That's okay.

Right now, you are at a critical juncture, especially with the four year old. It's vital that you or your partner read to them as much as possible (and for their sake don't make it any of the dreary non-fiction on your list! :p). Let them see that you love to read (even if you don't, fake it), get them to associate reading as something fun and good to do. Once you clear that hurdle, make sure that they see you being open to new thoughts, new ideas- again, even if you have to fake it. Show them (or pretend) to learn something from what you read, and be pleased about it. Show them (or pretend) to change your mind about something.

When they get older, don't stifle them. Let them read books you are afraid might be "too difficult" or "inappropriate" for their age level- they might surprise you.

That's basically what I did, and I couldn't be more please with the results. This month so far my daughter has read "Neverwhere", "Catch-22", "The Handmaid's Tale", "Huckleberry Finn", and right now I believe she's in the middle of "The Jungle Book".

As far as specific recommendations go, you cannot go wrong with "Alice in Wonderland"/"Through the Looking Glass". That's the first book I read to my kids.
 
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This is sort of off the cuff, and I might want to add to it. Again, without knowing the age and sex of the child--they might want to wait on some of these. :)


Non-Fiction
Choosing Civility by P.M. Forni
Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan
Flim-Flam by James Randi


Fiction
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll Everyman edition
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald


The Norton Anthology of Poetry 1970 edition
A Pocketbook of Verse
 
Denver said:
I think this is a cool idea.

How about including a list of the major religious books too, so they can get a look at the landscape and put it in context with your other suggestions:

The Bible (old and new testament, and Catholic Apocrypha)
The Koran
Bhagavad Gita
The Book of Mormon
Popol Vuh

Stuff like that.
Click to expand...

While I like this idea, and I actually own most of these books, I suspect they won't read them. I didn't get very far myself to be honest.

Even the members of these religions don't get round to reading their holy texts.

I do like Greek mythology. Nice stories with lots of fighting, shagging, backstabbing and bickering. Who needs soaps?
 
For when they're younger, Jacqueline Wilson's books. Apart from being great books to get kids reading (The Story of Tracy Beaker was one of my most obsessively re-read books as a child, and one of the first books I read by myself) they sensitively introduce kids to all kinds of important issues like peer pressure, bullying, bereavement, divorce, mental illness, homelessness and relationships. I think she's an incredibly gifted writer, and if I ever have kids I'll be striving to buy them her full bibliography.
 
Eddie Dane said:
I do like Greek mythology. Nice stories with lots of fighting, shagging, backstabbing and bickering. Who needs soaps?
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You cannot go wrong there.

For the four year old:
D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths
For something else to read to them at night: Andrew Lang

It might seem a natural first reaction for us as skeptics to balk at reading fairy stories to our kids, but knowing them is an essential part of what it means to be fully culturally literate in this civilisation.
 
This thread is going in a completely different direction then I originally intended. Perhaps my OP was poorly worded and perhaps too vague.

I meant to say: What if you could leave a list of books that really influenced you, keeping in mind that you might not be around to teach your kids; What books would you leave them?

I was thinking of young adults.

But the suggestions that you have all given up to now are good, so let's stay on this path.

Actually more useful than my original idea. The suggestions you have given me, I can use directly with my kids. And I'll check out the books you have suggested.

I'll have to look for translations though. I'm Dutch and my wife is German-Italian (the original axis of evil:D). My kids are bi-lingual and understand both Dutch and German.

If I were to start a new thread along the lines of my original idea, should I do it in the education subforum? Or is there a more appropriate place for it?
 
Eddie Dane said:
I do like Greek mythology. Nice stories with lots of fighting, shagging, backstabbing and bickering. Who needs soaps?
Click to expand...

Yeah, make them read The Iliad of Homer...

...in the original :) (Forget the Odyssey, that sucks)


May I add "The Blind Watchmaker", "The Selfish Gene" by Dawkins;
"Contact" and "Cosmos" by Sagan (preferably the coffee-table illustrated
version of "Cosmos", sadly now long out of print. My own treasured copy
was lost in a fire long ago) and "Commando Fighting Techniques" by Wilson
and Evans.
 
LibraryLady said:
This is sort of off the cuff, and I might want to add to it. Again, without knowing the age and sex of the child--they might want to wait on some of these. :)

...
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame...
Click to expand...

I read this book many times as a child but I just reread it as an adult recently. There is some seriously weird stuff in there, like the little otter's experience with Pan - not sure where Grahame was coming from on that one.

My first introduction to pareidolia came from the Little House books - in Little House in the Big Woods, Pa is walking home late at night when he encounters a bear standing on its back legs in a clearing in the moonlight. When he fails to be able to scare it away, he finally realizes it's a stump...taught me that not everything you think you see in the dark is what it appears to be...
 
Eddie Dane said:
This thread is going in a completely different direction then I originally intended. Perhaps my OP was poorly worded and perhaps too vague.

I meant to say: What if you could leave a list of books that really influenced you, keeping in mind that you might not be around to teach your kids; What books would you leave them?
Click to expand...

All of them.

With that comment (made only half in jest) out of the way, I've named a couple, but I'll repeat them again, with others.

Non-fiction:
The Art of War, Sun Tzu
The Prince, Machiavelli
Courtship in the Animal Kingdom, Mark Walters (short book, long story)
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell
On Writing, Stephen King
Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud

Fiction:
Any and all of Shakespeare, Poe, Twain, Lovecraft, Vonnegut, H.G. Wells, H Beam Piper, and Neil Gaiman.
Clockwork Orange
Catch-22
Cannery Row
Of Mice and Men
Treasure Island
Lolita
Lord of the Flies
Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
Johnny Got His Gun
Handmaid's Tale
Zorba the Greek
Crying of Lot 49
Mockingbird
Maus (graphic novel in two volumes)
The Female Man
Justine - (might want to wait till they're eighteen on this one :))
Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions (ed. Harlan Ellison)
Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vols I, IIa and IIb

That's off the top of my head.

ETA: Forgot "Confederacy of Dunces" and "Jurgen" - Even though I'm only half through that last one I'm really enjoying it. Obviously a big influence on Gaiman.
 
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