58. The Call of the Wild by Jack London

I chose this one to read with my daughter, as I loved it when I read it and thought she would enjoy the story and learn a bit of history from it as well.  I'm counting it as another book read, even though I already have it noted on the blog from 2014.  Mainly, though, I anticipated that she would like the transformation of the dog.  The thing was, I read it in my 40s when my friend Mike recommended it to me.  I was far from being a parent at that point and somehow completely eluded in my memory how brutal this book is.  It also has a theme of 19th century simplistic Darwinism, that I also appreciated less in my 50s than in my 30s.  The black dog who has a racist name also didn't help.  Nonetheless, it's still a gripping and rich book but I think better appreciated by adults or children who have already absorbed a bit more of the darkness of the world (12 years old might be the youngest) and can handle the rich vocabulary, idiom and complex sentences of the 19th century.  If you are an adult who likes adventure fiction and haven't yet read The Call of the Wild, it's a classic for a reason.  Read it.  It's short.