Top 5 Wednesday: Books I Wish I Had Read Earlier

This week's Top 5 Wednesday is five books I wish I read earlier.  There were some that came to mind instantly, but others I had to peruse my shelves to find others.

As always, you can join all of us who participate in Top 5 Wednesdays by checking out the Goodreads group.

These are in no particular order.  Let us begin!

1. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
   
   Somehow, I made it into my late twenties without ever reading this classic.  I'm not sure how I managed that.  When I finally read it, I couldn't connect with it the way countless others have.  When I hear other people talk about it and read literary analysis on it, I completely understand why this is a beloved novel to so many.  However, I think my life was too far removed from the stage that Holden experiences, so I wasn't able to share that with him.


2. The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith
   
   Confession: I still haven't read this book.  It's on my bookshelf, though, waiting for me to pick it up.  I just wish that I had read it before I knew that J.K. Rowling wrote it.  I would have loved to read her writing without the bias of knowing that it's her.


3. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
   
   Asian literature is one of my favorite genres, but I didn't discover it until 2007 when I took an class.  We mostly read the classics, which was great, but I discovered a passion for contemporary Asian literature when I read my first Murakami novel.  It was so different from Western writing that I remember finishing it and feeling like I had changed as a reader.  Murakami changed the course of my literary life.


4. Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard
   
   While working on my degree in philosophy, I read a lot, of course.  But I didn't get around to reading any Kierkegaard until the very end of my sophomore year, the last book in my course on existentialism.  I really, really wish that there had been more of a balance before then because I was so overwhelmed by how hopeless all the philosophy I was exposed to was by the time this was assigned.  


5. The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer
   
   This selection represents my regret that I didn't start reading classic Christian literature sooner.  But this influential work by Tozer is one of my favorites thus far.  It's short but impactful, and it really illuminated what I was already reading in the Bible.  This is one that all Christians should read.

Those are the top 5 books I wish had come into my life much sooner than they did.  What books do you wish you had read earlier?  Let me know in the comments!