Books I Am Thankful For

On Thanksgiving i am thankful for many things. I have a good life. I have been blessed with much. But as this is a blog about books and food.... well, at this moment, I am thankful for books and food! Specifics, you ask? Well, when it comes to food, you can pretty much stick it on a plate and place it in front of me. When it comes to reading material, stick it in front of my nose and chances are I'll give it at least a quick perusal.

I am thankful for books. I don't know how my parents instilled such a love of reading in me. Certainly they loved to read themselves. And although my siblings all learned the love of books, somehow with me they became as important as air. And still are. I have many times recommended books and authors to family and friends, coworkers and even strangers on the bus, and given them lists for themselves and for their children. The lists are always incomplete, for how do you, how can you, possibly make a list of recommended reading, even for yourself, that will ever be complete, when people's tastes change, when our own tastes change? When our political viewpoint and philosophical worldview change, sometimes returning to their roots, sometimes into new paths never before explored? What I read and enjoyed as a kid, I don't now. But on the other hand, I do. And I have recently discovered how much I missed as a kid.

So I present the following list of books - title, series, authors - that I am thankful for today; listed as they come to mind or as I glance through my bookshelves for memory jogs, and not in order of importance, because if I were to make this list tomorrow, I might think of them in a different order, but that won't make them any less important. They are books which I return to every five years or so and books I read once and might never read again but which I remember fondly when seeing them because they influenced me for good at the time I read them which may have been last year, five, ten, fifteen, twenty... whoops, starting to date myself here -- many years ago. They are books which first turned me on to a new author, even if it wasn't that author's best work or their first work or even the first in that series. They are fiction and nonfiction, mystery and fantasy and science fiction and religious and scientific; they are uplifting or silly, thought provoking or mental pablum. They are recent discoveries and recent rediscoveries. They are new and old in their publication dates; they are books which were better than the movies based upon them and books which had little to do with the movies they supposedly inspired. They are books I first read in beat up paperbacks, or leather bound hardcovers, or electronic format; they are books I purchased on a whim knowing nothing about them or books which were gifts or books borrowed from the public library or lent by a friend or assigned in a high school English class due to that long standing and somewhat sadistic program of forcing children to read books which have no relevancy in their lives and suck the joy of reading out of children's minds and hearts (but somehow an occasional good book slips through.) These are the books which occupy much  wall and floor space in every room of my home but which also occupy the corridors of my soul. The only categorization I file them under is somewhat loose themes, but sometimes those themes overlap much as my reading does, for although I have but one nose, it sniffs multiple books throughout every day.

The Bible. The Book of Mormon. Doctrine and Covenants. The Pearl of Great Price. The Screwtape Letters. Mere Christianity. Even As I Am. Infinite Atonement. Great Shall Be Your Joy. Lighten Up. Act In Doctrine. Standing For Something. Prophecy In Modern Times. The Broken Heart.

A Wrinkle In Time. A Wind At the Door. The Dark is Rising. So You Want To Be a Wizard. Deep Wizardry. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. The Magic Thief. Peter Pan. Rose Daughter. Inkheart. Dragon Slippers. Treasure Island. Time Stops For No Mouse. Larklight. Heartlight. The Secret of Platform 13. Amulet. Escape To Witch Mountain. The Forgotten Door. The Phantom Tollbooth. Five Children and It. Breadcrumbs. Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos. The Illyrian Adventure. The Book of Three. Taran Wanderer. Westmark. House of Stairs. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Airborn. Bedknob and Broomstick. The Ordinary Princess. A Hidden Magic. Over Sea, Under Stone. Unicorns In the Rain. Coraline. Wizard's Hall. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Charlotte's Web. Stuart Little. The Great Brain. Mary Poppins. The Lost Island. Dragonsong. Hugo. Kidnapped.

The Outsiders. To Kill a Mockingbird. Jane Eyre. Joy in the Morning. Pride and Prejudice. It's Like This, Cat. The Penderwicks. The Penderwicks on Gardham Street. A Ring of Endless Light. Saffy's Angel. Dolphin Luck. A Christmas Carol. The Christmas Box. The Long Winter (Wilder). Shane. Old Yeller. The Devil's Arithmetic. Jacob Have I Loved. Holes. Dear Mr Henshaw. From the Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler. A Mustard Seed of Magic. A Door Near Here. My Side of the Mountain. It's Nothing To a Mountain. Johnny Tremain. April Morning. Speak. Dreamland. Just Listen. The Four Million. Rainbow Valley.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Fahrenheit 451. The Time Machine. War of the Worlds. Iron Rain. But What of Earth. Pilgrimage. Empty World. No Blade of Grass. The Long Winter (Christopher). The White Mountains. The Third Level. The Last Oasis. Uglies. The Giver. Life As We Knew it. Z For Zechariah. Whispers From the Grave. Among the Hidden. House of the Scorpion. Stonewolf. A Spell For Chameleon. The Folk Of the Fringe. Seventh Son.

The 39 Steps. The Haunted Bookshop. The Face of A Stranger. The Cater Street Hangman. The Unexpected Mrs Pollifax. Chasing Vermeer. The Arm of the Starfish. The Secret Ways. The Victoria Vanishes. Aunt Dimity's Death. Murder At the Vicarage. Jar City. Gambit. A Stranger is Watching. Don't Talk to Strangers. Nightfall. The Callender Papers. No 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Crocodile on the Sandbank. Evans Above. Defend and Betray. The Anodyne Necklace. A Sunless Sea. Hardy Boys Mysteries (the older books). Nancy Drew Mysteries (the older books). Judy Bolton Mysteries. Trixie Beldon Mysteries. A Christmas Promise. A Christmas Garland. Mystery of the Strange Traveler. the Moon-Spinners. The Young Unicorns.

Winnie-the-Pooh. The Red Book. The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. Ellen's Lion. Harold and the purple Crayon. Caps For Sale. Imogene's Antlers. A Hole Is to Dig. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day. CDB. One Was Johnny. Where The Wild Things Are. The Jungle Book.

One's Company. There's An Adult In My Soup. Gift From the Sea. Father to Son. I want To Grow Hair, I Want To Grow up, I Want To Go To Boise. All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten. Things I Overheard While Talking To Myself. Random Acts of Kindness. Letters To Karen. The Five love Languages. Love Must Be Tough. Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. Reviving Ophelia. A Thatched Roof. Three Cups of Tea. Abraham. West With the Night. The Endless Steppe. Mr God, This Is Anna. The Hiding Place.

Whiskers and Rhymes. Out In the Dark and Daylight. Now We Are Six. You Read To Me, I'll Read To You. A Light In the Attic. The Dragons Are Singing Tonight. A Child's Garden of Verses.

What am I forgetting? Probably a great deal! In going through my books and thinking, Oh, I remember that! or I know that touched me, but I don't remember why; maybe I should read it again?  it is pretty easy to understand why I have more books than I can plug into shelves. even after working at it for a year. Some books are relatively easy to pass on, others not so much. I can tell myself, "If it touched you or entertained you ten years ago but doesn't move you now, let someone else enjoy it" - but there's a part of me that wonders, "What if I want to revisit it again, maybe even soon?" When I started listing the books i am thankful for, I did not expect the list to be quite so long. Many of my favorites are already on dedicated shelves for that. Many of what I have listed here tonight were favorites when I read them, but for some it was twenty or even thirty years ago. Were I to reread those books today, would they move me in the same way, even if they make my smile now to look at them?

Perhaps I ought to pay attention to the depth, to the degree, of emotional response when I see that book I've not touched for one, two, three decades - is it immediate; is it intense? Do I really want to relive it again?  Do I need to, as my needs have changed? Or can I consider their missions fulfilled and release them? Can I be thankful for what they meant then and let someone else enjoy those treasures now?

Curious questions to ask myself. Perhaps the best way to show gratitude for all these reads is to let someone else own them. Or at least borrow them.