My favorite books to remind you that wonder is still possible

While I have no desire to return to being a naïve teenager, Charlie’s wide-eyed tale of adolescence tugged at the sentimentalist in me. Charlie’s life was less than perfect but he kept going back out into the world to discover new, wondrous things. Sometimes those adventures led him upward and sometimes they led him downward. Adults are not immune to ups and downs. I certainly am not. Charlie’s tale did remind me of some of my own teenage tales. Like the time I came in last at a track race and fell down and cried because I thought it was the worst thing ever (it was not). Or the time a cute girl asked where I lived and I felt wonderful for days. So Charlie’s tale reminded me that I could feel wonder and that I should set aside my cynicism sometimes and let that happen.

Despite the terrible backdrop of Nazis and WW2, we find Liesel engaging with the world and growing up through books, her father, her neighbors, and a hidden boy in the basement. And while she was perhaps too young to know that the world should be any different, she was intrepid, While I grew up in a peaceful world, I was paralyzingly shy and every venture into the world brought fear of social interaction. I wanted to be intrepid and I was not. While reading The Book Thief, I kept thinking I want to hang out with Liesel. I would have been brave enough to go out into the world with her by my side and let the wonder of the world come as it may. 

Pi is literally thrown into a boat and asked to survive. As he tells his sometimes terrible and sometimes terrifying tale, Pi conveys the wonder at having survived and not the anguish of having almost repeatedly died. He reminded me that surviving a harrowing or unplanned adventure is a tale worth telling. Reminded me that I was 34 years old when I finally told myself I was tired of being afraid, that the unknown was an adventure that could be filled with wonder. Even the unknowns I did not get to choose. Reminded me that I need to remember that again.

I loved how Marlowe retained a sense of wonder while steering himself into the darkness, while surrounded by those who did not wonder about it but only wanted to exploit it. I realized you could wonder about something without judging, or at the very least wonder through a lens of empathy. While I have always been empathetic, Marlowe made me realize perhaps I was often empathetic (and wonderous and sympathetic) to things I really already understood, and that for things that were in the darkness I substituted wonder for anxiety. Marlow’s wonder motivated me to look at the shadows with wonder too.

Shakespeare’s unwitting dupes from Hamlet are thrown into the unknown when fate’s die is cast for them. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern know that something has changed, but they cannot put their finger on it. Flowing with the unknown instead of being afraid of it, they approach their new circumstance with wonder albeit with a little skepticism. I have always erred on the side of being naïve as opposed to cynical, but they taught me I could be in wonder without being naïve by employing a bit of rational observance. Of course, it didn’t hurt that their observations came about through rapid-fire, witty dialog.