My sister just asked me whether a raccoon ate me since my net presence hasvanished in the past week. That means that no matter how busy it is, it’s time to blog. So here’s to finally putting in writing something I was thinking about a few weeks back (I’m actually finishing a draft post that was dated June 3rd. Yikes!)….
I spent the last couple days very much enjoying When You Reach Me by 
Rebecca Stead. It’s out in July from Random House and I’ll have to tell you about it then because it’s really fantastic. But one of the things that first caught my attention in the book was that the main character is always reading/talking about/carrying with her a copy of her favorite book, A Wrinkle in Time. She’s never without it. I thought it was funny that she latched so tightly to that one specific book and refused to move on to others. But then again…
This month I’m experiencing the very Vineyard summer shuffle. I lost my housing right at the worst possible time to find a place on the Island and the apartment I found won’t be ready until July 1st. So I’m camping for a month. (That’s right, America: we’re actually insane on the Vineyard.) The hardest part of putting all my stuff into storage was choosing 1 measly little box of books to keep with me.
Like all of you, I’m sure, I never quite know what I’ll want to be reading next, so to try to project out a month was daunting to say the least. (And yes, I know I work in a bookstore and not only can buy books every day, but am sent free ones on a regular basis as well… Logic means nothing to the anightstandophobia.) I went for an assortment of target ages, genres, lengths, hoping that I would be able to find something in that box to fit any mood.
But as I packed, I realized that I had to take up space with a book that I probably would not read this month. Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. I’ve had it with me since I first read it in high school. I used to go back to it more often than I do now, but I haven’t been able to put it anywhere except right on my nightstand or desk, always where it won’t get lost among all the other books.
So the letters came camping with me. Probably silly, but they make any place I am feel like home.
And now it’s gotten me wondering: do other people have books like this? Books that have gone beyond the words, or the story, so that the physical object acts as a security blanket? I know plenty of people who must always have books around, but what about one specific book?
What’s your security blanket book?
(And yes, I’m refusing to put a picture of Letters to a Young Poet on here because I can’t find a picture of the book with the cover I own… or the creased edges and coffee stains…)
The physical object would be my iPod, but it’s the fact that the audio Harry Potters live perpetually upon it that makes it my security blanket. I transfer other books on and off of it as I work my way through them, but Jim Dale’s reading of the HP series stays put. They’re my go-to companions in times of illness, stress, or insomnia as well as my method of choice for shutting out the world when necessary.
I didn’t even think about audio books! So funny… and now that you mention it, I have two permanent occupants on my ipod… The Percy Jackson books and the Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant/Karl Pilkington podcasts.
I wonder what that incredibly odd combo says about me.
This morning I interviewed Islander Cynthia Riggs on Mystery Matters, my internet radio show, and she mentioned your store, so I had to check out the website – and, of course, the blog entries.
Tolkien – the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I know you said ONE book, but if there were such a thing as 1,800-page novels, then it would be just one book. I read all four volumes aloud to my unborn first child thirty-four years ago. When he was six, I read him the entire epic all over again. At the start of second grade, his teacher asked the class, “What did you read over the summer?” She wasn’t prepard for his answer!
Someone recently gave me one of those boxed sets of Lord of the Rings. Beautiful. Fancy. But not nearly as comforting as my ratty old paperbacks, the ones I’d take with me if I had to camp out for a month.
love to read fav childhood book was little women have read the hobbit