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FAIRBANKS - Beginnings of new years are often fraught with “oughts.” There’s one compiled by the editors of Popular Mechanics making the Internet rounds that’s called “100 Skills Every Man Should Know: 2008’s Ultimate DIY List.”

Being a certified fogey, I had to look up “DIY.” It stands for “do it yourself.”

Ever since 1859, when Sam Smiles wrote “Self-Help,” many public library shelves have been packed with never-ending supplies of self-help books. Nevertheless, even library frequenters like me are found wanting in PM’s eyes. I measured up in beer-making, diaper-changing and sledge hammering, but flying stunt kites, using a stick welder, “tackling steep drops on a mountain bike,” and many more remain beyond my present ken.

Considering the source, the fact that most of the PM skills are mechanical in nature is unsurprising. I was shocked, however, by their omissions.

Car-waxing makes the PM list, but not calling your mother to say you love her? Running a sand-blaster is included, but not volunteering for a worthy cause? And not even mentioning reading?

Much in life is enhanced by being a good reader. Readers perform better at school and work, communicate and express themselves with more confidence and creativity and have more opportunity to lead satisfying lives. The American Academy of Pediatrics “strongly recommends reading to children every day, starting after they are first born,” because “reading stimulates the development of the brain, language and a closer emotional relationship with a child.”

There are more lists of books that you ought to read than you can shake a NY Times Book Review supplement at, but they’re all inherently limited by their creators’ subjectivity. One called “30 Books Everyone Should Read Before Their 30th Birthday,” for example lists a bunch of worthy titles selected by compiler Marc Chernoff.

Since there are thousands of great books in existence, Chernoff leaves out most of them. His list is found at www.BrazenCareerist.com, along with a slew of outraged comments by readers who found their favorites missing.

“How could you make such a sin?!!” asked a typical commenter. “YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN THE BEST BOOKS EVER!!! Terry Pratchett … any book he writes is AMAZING!!! And Aldous Huxley — Brave New World!!! … ‘Catcher in the Rye’ is for retards.”

In Chernoff’s defense, critics’ reliability is proportional to their exclamation marks, and Chernoff did include many good works, not least of which is Kenneth Grahame’s masterpiece, “The Wind in the Willows.”

Professor Vladimir Nabokov taught that great books hold up to repeated readings, and the very best also change in relevance as readers progress through life’s phases and stages. “Willows” certainly qualifies on that score.

Many of us were first exposed through Disney’s cartoons to Grahame’s tale, the adventures encountered by Mole, Rat and Toad, those archetypes of English bourgeoisie circa 1900. Their animated antics distilled the novel’s action, but reading “Willows” in one’s twenties reveals Grahame’s mastery of literary nuance, and taking it up again in later years allows a deeper appreciation of his more mature observations and authorial craftsmanship.

“Willows can be so many books during one reader’s lifetime,” Gary Kamiya recently wrote for Salon.com, “because it is more than one book to begin with. It is at once a children’s book and an adult book, a wish-fulfillment and a satire, a comic adventure story and a poetic bildungsroman, the rollicking story of Toad and the inward-turning story of Mole … And it also tells the secret story of its author — a story few know, and one as profoundly sad as the book is profoundly happy.”

First published a century ago, more than one hundred editions of “Willow” have been published, and its annual sales run in the hundreds of thousands. It’s also a touchstone of English literature with which serious readers really ought to have some acquaintance.

I recommend reading an edition containing the original illustrations by Ernest Shepard, the guy who later illustrated “Winnie the Pooh,” and who peppered “Willow” with scads of wonderfully evocative line drawings.

You’re never too old for fantasy, and we grown-ups ought to work at nurturing our sense of wonder.

“The gift of fantasy,” Albert Einstein noted, “has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”

Greg Hill is director of Fairbanks North Star Borough libraries.