Cherished Books

Reading grows with the reader. From a child you move from picture books, to I Can Read books, to your first chapter books, to small novels, and slowly into the genres we enjoy be they fiction or non. As your comprehension skills improve, as your life experiences change so does a person’s reading. But even as we move forward readers tend to have favorite books in the same way we have other favorite memories from our past. Perhaps they link us to a favorite time, a favorite person; or maybe they changed the way we looked at the world. It is the power of literature –to teach me, to grow with me, to remind me and link me all while allowing me to escape that causes us to love reading. It is the connection. So with that in mind, here are my most cherished books:

The books that mean the most to me:
1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
2. Sweet Valley Twins: A Christmas without Elizabeth
3. Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
4. Shakespeare’s Sonnets
5. ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas by Clement Moore

I cannot explain in one post the reasons why they are all here in detail, so I will just summarize quickly. To start with all of these books are nostalgically connected to my past. For me, three of them, Little Women, Sweet Valley and Shakespeare, symbolize the power of literature to make a person feel and learn about the world around them even though you are reading fiction.

I will say, if I had my choice, Fear & Loathing wouldn’t be on the list. However, it is on there because it is the book that I recommended to a perfect stranger despite never having read it before. Later the stranger called me to borrow it (apparently I gave him the impression I owned it??!! I had to run to Chapters to buy it, beat it up so it looked like I had actually read it, so I could lend it to him). And later yet, the stranger became my husband. Had I known this, I 100% would’ve chosen a different book. Bah! What kind of romantic book geek story does that make when that is the title?

But of all of them Little Women is the one I keep going back to. I mentioned before that I read and reread Little Women and get something new out of it every time. My first memory of Little Women was the copy that was on my mother’s book shelf when I was a girl. I wasn’t allowed to touch it. I knew her grandmother had given it to her. It was beat up and well read even then. I don’t remember when, but one day I wanted that story instead of a night time story and she began reading that to me at nights. I really have no idea if we ever read the whole thing or whether I actually understood it, but I remember having my own edition by grade three. I remember re reading it in grade 5 and wanting to be exactly like Josephine and thinking my first crush was exactly like Laurie so why on earth didn’t Jo choose him?! It was very much a love story. In Jr. High it was a book of women’s rights. Jo could make her own choices, do her own thing, despite the norms and expectations around her-why couldn’t I? That message continues to resonate with me to this day. I have taken further messages from the book: more on the strength of women together and as individuals, of civil war history, of philosophy, of love, and so much more. I’ve wanted Beth and Marmie’s goodness, I sympathized with Aimee and Meg, I wanted to be (and often continue to want to be) Jo. I still have a crush on dear Laurie. And I never liked Aunt March though I now understand why she was the way she was. It is a book for anyone old or young and I look forward to the day I have a child to share it with.

And if you haven't ever read it, of all of the books on this list, I recommend that you do.