Top Ten Tuesday #9

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish in June 2010.

July 26: Top Ten Things Books Have Made Me Want To Do or Learn About After Reading Them (inspired by this post wayyy back in 2012.)

So this post took me a lot more thought than the previous Top Ten Tues posts. Mostly because as I mature I have already done a lot of the things I hoped to do in my life, and because I am better at realizing my limitations. But looking back at a wishful, dreamy, much younger self at say 12, 13 and 14, yeah there were a lot of things that reading books made me want to do. So most of this list is from the perspective of a tween me not the 36 year old version.

(Also, yes I realize that it’s Friday… I was on vacation and got a little behind in my posting. But it was a GOOD refreshing vacation, so I’ll forgive myself. 😉)

After reading books like the Lord of the Rings, Narnia and the dragon King trilogy by Stephen R. Lawhead what young person wouldn’t be inspired to save the world?

This was in 8th grade after we did a month long unit on Alaska where we read Call of the Wild, along with other texts. Besides which, the movie Iron Will had just come out and Mackenzie Astin was totally hot. We even got to go to the theater to watch Iron Will as a class. But you know what? I don’t really like to be cold, I hate huskies (because when I was 5 one bit my skull open,) I’m not very athletic, and the Iditarod is not at all the sort thing I would actually enjoy. Tweens aren’t really know for their logic, but they are know for going crazy for the latest heartthrob and that’s what we’ll put this down as.

Reading Hardy Boys books (like The Secret of the Caves) and a Partridge Family book where Danny gets trapped in a cave made me want to try my hand a cave exploration. This lasted about 10 steps into my first cave where I promptly realized that my fear of bats could not be overcome by the sense of adventure that exploring caves provided. (I am still afraid of bats, and to all the nay-sayers out there that would assure me that bats are harmless this happened in a neighboring town “Rabid bat bites local man,” inside the mans house, while he was asleep!)

My childhood hero’s were Robin Hood, William Tell and Sacajawea. 2 out of 3 are archers, so of course I wanted to take up archery. Archery and adventure seem to go hand in hand and when your 13 or 14 that’s a big deal. (And let’s remember that Hunger Games came out when I was in my thirties.) BBCs Robin of Sherwood didn’t do anything but fan the flames of this idea. Luckily the summer camp I went to had archery lessons. At one point and time I wasn’t too bad of a shot.

By the fifth grade I had read every Nancy Drew story and was starting in on the Hardy Boys. It seemed to me there were probably mysteries every where to be solved, if only I could figure out where to start. I never did solve a true mystery, but that’s okay. As an adult I’ve reread several Nancy Drew/ Hardy Boys books and you know what…? They get kidnapped an awful lot. So maybe solving mysteries is better left to others.

I got an outer space how-to-draw book at a book fare when I was probably in 4th or 5th grade and I’ve been a doodler ever since. Check out my tumbler for more doodles and coloring stuff.

Seriously… EVERYTHING IN SPACE WANTS TO KILL YOU! Have you read a sci-fi novel or short story set in space? Then you should know it’s rough out there. I’ll stick to planet Earth, thank you.

I think we’ve all been here, you pick up a random book by an unknown author and LOVE IT! Which sends you in search of more books by the same author. That’s what happened with Stephen R Lawhead waaaaay back when I was 13. My dad took me to the book store for my birthday and I got to pick out 1 book and 1 cassette. I picked out book one of the Dragon King trilogy and history was made. According to Goodreads I’ve read more books by Lawhead than any other author.

Reading about the lives of people like Hudson Taylor, Gladys Aylward, and Nora Lam was what first got me interested in China in the 8th grade. I would go on to take Chinese as my high school language (yes, it and 9 other languages were offered through the public school system where I went to high school.) After graduation I went on my first trip to China, when I went with a group for the summer to Hong Kong. It was 1997 right after the hand over, and we also went over the border a couple of times to visit Shenzhen. In 2002 I went back to teach English as a second language for a summer. Then in 2012 my husband and I traveled to China to visit our very first exchange student Lee (pictured below.)

I think this one is self explanatory.

What about you? Has there been something reading a book has made you want to do or learn? Has reading inspired you to any adventures? Let me know in the comments below.