I recently put a bunch of my teen lit novels upstairs. I needed to make room for new books. Boxing them up made me sad, even though I know I will never give them away. Someday I’ll have a place of my own and enough room to display them all. And I really do want to display them all, even stuff I read when I was 13 or 14. No matter how much I grow as a person or how far I go, I will always cherish The Realm of Possibility and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. Other books have greatly affected me since, but never more.
When someone gives me a book I like to write on the inside front cover who gave it to me. I especially love it when the giver does it for me. It’s my belief now that there’s no greater gift in life than story. When I was younger, in different phases of my life, I would have argued with this notion. I would have offered love or God or especially friendship as things that were the greatest gift. But now I understand that love and God and friendship…all those things are stories. Stories we believe in. Stories that change our lives. When I’m old I hope to have shelves and shelves of novels on display, of all the books that made me who I am. And when I look inside the covers I’ll see “From Amy” or “From Kate” or “From Dad” and I’ll know exactly who gave me each piece of my puzzle. I’ll know from whom I received each book and how the stories and the people I shared them with shaped my life.
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