Boys' Books

For swearing a dislike for the outdoors when I was a kid, I read a lot of books about the outdoors. Books that are often categorized as “Boys’ Books,” because they’re about finding oneself in the wilderness, or struggling against the wilderness, or whatever.

I was all about Jack London books when I was in middle school, White Fang and The Call of the Wild especially. The third book in Jean Craighead George’s Julie of the Wolves series, Julie’s Wolf Pack, was also a favorite, even more so than the first book, because it was only about the interactions between the wolf packs in a small region of Alaska, and included few human characters.

Later, I enjoyed what were probably abridged versions of Victorian era sci-fi and adventure, like H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, all that business. My grandmother tried to interest me in Little House on the Prairie by giving me a new book in the series for each special occasion, and I would thank her, read one chapter to be polite, and then set it aside to find out once again if Buck the kidnapped half-wolf dog would survive the epic battle with Spitz, the alpha of the sled dog team. My mom would edge Jane Austen novels over the table at me during the summer, and I would nod at her absently as I read of White Fang’s struggle against humanity.

People made me nervous and bored in real life and in books, when I was an adolescent; 12+ish, I mean. I was All About people when I was in preschool and grade school, but that changed really quick when I suddenly changed environments and I discovered my deep loathing of dramatic change. Maybe I’m over exaggerating my shyness at the time, but considering the energy I spent agonizing over strategies of how to win friends, I’m not that sure. Oh man, I had strategies! Anyway, I was a nervous kid, but BOOKS; So great!