Baraka_Guru

It's incredible how little I read as a kid...how little I read until university, actually. I haven't read most of what's been listed here. By most, I mean at least 98% of it. Seriously.

I remember reading some cool novels in high school. I liked Of Mice and Men and Brave New World. But I didn't finish the latter. The only book I finished reading on the school curriculum was the former, but only because I liked it so much. There were many books I barely started. Most of them I probably got about half way.

But I don't quite consider my teenage years as my "childhood," so I must say I liked the series of books we had growing up that were in the same vein as a lot of Dr. Seuss. (I liked Dr. Seuss too, of course.) These books were mainly meant for learning to read and such. Between these and the books in high school, there is a big blank. I don't recall what I read in school, but I didn't really read outside of school at least until I was around 14, when I started to read cheap fantasy novels based on Dungeons & Dragons. You know, the TSR Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms series.

Odd, looking back at it.

Anyway, here is a memorable book from my childhood. It was the first book I read on my own: Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb by Al Perkins, illustrated by Eric Gurney.

Yeah, I wasted my youth watching tv and playing video games. Appalling, I know.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot