Friday favorites: Youthful reading lists

Creaky joints. Fading eyesight. Inability to sleep in. Forgetfulness.

There aren’t many perks to aging, but growing older isn’t totally bad — each year that passes seems to lend you more authority to tell kids these days what they ought to be doing.

And that applies to book recommendations as well.

Doubtlessly you have your own lists of what kids of all ages (you know, from 5 up to 35) should have read by now; contrast them with these ones we enjoyed stumbling upon and judging ourselves against.

The Guardian enlisted an author who adapts adult classics for children to pick 10 books that should be checked off by the time you reach 10.

And inspired by the recent distribution of We Should All Be Feminists to all 16-year-olds in Sweden, the paper asked authors to identify 23 books for teens to read. A bonus: Their recommendations come, in some cases, with some incisive commentary.

Even funnier are Bustle’s 11 books to read after college graduation — some fiction, some nonfiction, some short stories, some self-help. (“Sorry, but these are the sorts of inane aphorisms people will tell you when you complain about the job search so you better get used to hearing them now.”)

Business Insider’s list of 33 books to read before you turn 30 literally spans millennia, while offering that same topical mix recommended for recent college grads.

Or, for an alternative theme, you can try 30 works of Canadian fiction to be checked off by age 30. (We didn’t realize that Generation X and Life of Pi had Canadian roots — you may have similar epiphanies among the other titles.)

Personally, though, with less than a year before 30 and hardly a dent made in many of these previous lists, we’re most inclined to check out Bustle’s 21 books every woman should read by 35 ...  with 20 left unread and five-plus years to go, we could actually finish it and  keep working on our non-time-sensitive to-read list.