Reading is a big part of my life.  For as long as I can remember I have loved curling up with a good book.  I am at my most relaxed, most peaceful when curled up somewhere reading a good book.  Reading quiets my mind and my soul.  I love a fresh a new book whose pages have yet to be opened, whose spine is perfectly unbent.  But there is nothing like an old favorite.  A good old book is like an old friend, it just gets better and better and makes you feel at ease and at peace. Those favorite books that you just can’t live without and must read over and over again.

They sit on the book shelf whispering my name.  Their pages faded and wrinkled.  Their covers and spines weathered and permanently scarred from so many years of laying open in my hands. Those 8 books are old friends.  They’ve been through many years of my life with me.  They are my constant companions, my oldest and dearest friends. They are comfort food for my soul.

I can remember opening the pages of Anne of Green Gables for the very first time as an innocent, quiet, pensive 9 year old girl.  The words on the pages calling to me, pulling me in, captivating me.  As the story unraveled it changed me.  I came away from that book with more imagination, more desire, more need to express myself than when I started.  Over the next 2 years the other 7 books in the series entered my world.  As a young girl there really was nothing quite like reading the story of Anne, living her life with her through the pages of those books.

Today, the books are much more weathered than in those first years.  Today those books hold even more meaning for me than they did all those years ago when, as a girl of just 9 and 10 I picked them up and read them for the first time.  Many times I’ve picked up those books and read and re-read them.  The books carry the scars of many years of being part of my life.  They look weathered, and old, and loved.

Every couple of years I’ll feel an unexplained longing.  I’ll feel a pull towards something I can’t quite put my finger on until I glance at that row of weathered books on the book shelf.  They call to me with their familiarity and I pick them up and begin reading them all over again just like my 9 year old self and I’m instantly transported to a quiet, peaceful place.  Those books are part of me, part of who I am.

One day I’ll get to share these favorite books of mine with Maya.  I’ll hand her my special very weathered, very loved, much read copy of Anne of Green Gables and I’ll watch on as she delves into it’s pages and becomes transfixed by the words, pulled in by the story just like I did as a young girl, just like I still do today.

What is that one book for you, that one book you just can’t be without?