“Books That You’ve Always Wanted to Read.”That’s...

“Books That You’ve Always Wanted to Read.”

That’s the title of a free lecture to be given at the Glendale Central Library, 222 E. Harvard St., at 8 p.m. Wednesday.

Like all good titles, it makes you turn a few pages.

For many years, I’ve wanted to read “Remembrance of Things Past,” but I’ve never been sick enough. To get through Proust’s multivolume masterpiece, I figure, would take six months in bed, or an illness just this side of terminal.

I did pack a hard-bound copy of “War and Peace” along with me to Vietnam. I told myself that I did it to stay in touch with civilization, but the real reason may be that it was thick enough to stop a bullet.

Dr. Seuss’ death last week, though, reminded me of the books we really want to read.

The ones we read with a kid in our lap.

I had just gotten my 4-year-old son “The Cat in the Hat,” and Seuss’ drawings were just as antic as I remembered them. His rhymes still crackled under my teeth like peppermint candy.

The secret to writing books that children love is to write books that parents love to read.

As my son grows up, what’s to look forward to? More Seuss, of course. “Horton and the Egg” and the one about the oobleck. “Ferdinand the Bull.” Kipling’s story about the Elephant’s Child.

And, eventually, “A Christmas Carol,” with its ghosts and wonders and its Dickensian phrases that beg to be read aloud: “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, covetous old sinner was Scrooge.” Yeah.

That’s only the beginning.