The Gifts I love the Most

For my sixteenth birthday my parents gave me a beautiful set of pearl studs and a gold necklace with a single pearl drop pendant. One summer my grandma gave me her antique diamond engagement ring from her second marriage. I love them their beautiful, and wonderful and worth more than I make in a month, but the things I love the most are the hard cover set of Jane Austen books my brother gave me for my birthday one year. The hand illustrated copy of Little Women, the beautiful Burnett books I got for my eleventh birthday,  Dumas works, and the Asimov novels. These are the gifts I pick up time and time again. The ones I treasure. The bulk of my possessions. 

I've always been a dreamer, a story teller and a closeted emotional train wreck. The books I love allow me to be them all. A dragon rider on a distant planet, a novelist embroiled in espionage, or I can simply be myself sitting on the couch in my living room crying and laughing in the same breath. Books are treasures, the stories within their pages gifts from exceptional people.

I can't profess that all works of literature are wonderful and all authors are brilliant. What I love, someone else may hate. Without Hemingway's exceptionally mediocre talent and predictably depressing contrivances I wouldn't be able to better appreciate the emotional complexities of John Green's novels or the dynamic characters in David James Duncan's books.  From Treasure Island to Treasure Planet, from Gift of the Magi to Gift of Nothing, books are all a treasure and a gift. If its from someone else on a special occasion  just because or even if its from myself they are all brilliant.

So here I am date night and what do I want to do? No fancy restaurant  no trip to the theater,  I want to go to half price books and get lost for an hour or two. To surround myself with used volumes and hope to find one or maybe two more brilliant additions to my personal library.