I use my books. It drives Victor insane. He’s the person who will scream “YOU MONSTER!” at a complete stranger if he hears the sound of a spine breaking, and most of his best comics are permanently sealed in hard plastic slabs, mostly to protect them from me probably.
I live on the other side of the extreme. My books are all broken backs and finger smudges and dog-ears. You can find the best parts of my most beloved books by just letting the book fall open naturally, because it will automatically open to the places it’s been read over and over.
One of my favorite things to do is buy old books from estate sales…those books that have been well-loved by people who have passed. I flip through and look for the ones with creases and notes written in the edges and signs of a life well lived. Victor doesn’t understand it, but reading those found books is like reading with ghosts, ones who eagerly point out their favorite passages or share their thoughts or questions in the margins.
It sounds wrong, but you can tell that I really love a book if I damage it thoroughly. I destroy it with my love. I shove it in pockets and carry it in purses and suitcases. I drip bathwater on the edges and get pollen stuck in the pages. I underline passages that remind me I’m not alone, and tuck receipts and slips of paper into places I need to reread. It is my opinion that a treasured book should not be kept in a box or wrapper. It should be used. And battered. And loved…just as much as the owner is, as they carry that book through their life. As they drag it through the rough spots. And as it drags them through the rougher spots. Whenever I finish writing a book I always hope to myself that this is the kind of book I hope I have written.
Recently someone asked me to autograph their copy of Furiously Happy and they were embarrassed to show me the shape it was in, but it made me so incredibly happy. I asked if I could take a picture of it, and I keep that picture with me to remind me that in some ways I’ve succeeded.
Today is #NationalBookLoversDay and so I’d love it if you would share a few books you love so much that they’re like a part of you.
I’ll go first. Ray Bradbury’s From the Dust Returned. Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series. Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.
Your turn.
PS. My next book (You Are Here) is literally made to be written in, tacked to walls, shared and used. Victor is shuddering already. Leave a comment if you want one and I’ll randomly choose a few people to get free copies once they come out.
This is one of the things I detest about kindle books- THEY LACK SOUL. If I really love a book, I buy a physical copy and mark it up and love it. I totally get where you’re coming from.
At work yesterday a friend bought Furiously Happy for her book club. As she was speaking she had no idea about all the information you share here especially all the taxidermied animals and Beyonce!
I am glad I am not the only one who does this. Some of my books are so worn out. I do the same thing to my history magazines, read those cover to cover.
I would love your new book. Looks so very very cool!!
I will have to take a picture of a few of my well-loved books. I’m the same with mine. I love the cover on that one, though – I haven’t seen it before. Is it a special edition?
(It’s the special coverless edition. ~ Jenny)
Ernest Heminway’s Old Man and the Sea. and I also love the Sandman series.
My favorite books. Hmm. I do love Rosamund Pilcher and Maeve Binchy. I have read Tara Road and The Shell Seekers more times than I can count. And Harry Potter. Every, single one of them. And The Far Pavilions. I’ve had to buy multiple copies because mine fall apart.
I am a book hoarder. I treasure them and treat them with kid gloves, which is why I have electronic versions of my Harry Potters and reading copies of my other favorites. My book shelves are shrines.
I spilled something (I forget what – probably wine) on my copy of Furiously Happy and was mortified and then was like “eh. My book. I can spill if I want!:”
I don’t lend my books to people who dog ear pages though – ruin your own books, monsters! :p
Some of the books that I really love, that get me through tough times are:
Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman, The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx, The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood, The Collected Auden, poetry by W.H. Auden, Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier. The Tiffany Aching Series by Terry Pratchett.
Is it strange that I sometimes destroy with love, but sometimes I’m Victor?
That’s what my copy of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened looks like. I feel better now. And I can’t wait for the next book!
I have a mass market paperback of Jane Eyre that my senior English teacher gave me. It’s been through the ringer and scotch tape is holding it together. I have newer copies but this paticular copy means alot to me.
Mine Till Midnight by Lisa Kleypas, The Language Archive by Julia Cho, and Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare. I realize two of those are plays, but they’re in absolute tatters now that I’ve read them so many times over the years. Also Grimm’s Faerie Tales, the spine doesn’t exist on my copy anymore.
That is a beautiful book! I was gifted a used D&D Players Guide by my new DM, and he felt bad because all the pages are falling out. I’m so glad to not have a new book because I’m going to ruin it anyway.
I’m firmly in the “cherish and never mar” camp with Victor, but I like your “reading with ghosts” analogy for estate-sale books. I just can’t personally handle my own books so roughly (especially paperbacks, for some reason.)
I suspect my OCD is not only in the driver’s seat on this issue, but has locked the doors and keeps pulling away so no one else can get in the car.
Madeline L’Engle’s A Swiftly Tilting Planet. I read that book so much that I cannot if I tried to read my original copy one more time I don’t think I’d be able to tape it back together.
Play it as it Lays. Joan Didion. Simple perfection.
I love your books, and I am waiting for the next one(s)! I hope your days are looking up, it’s been a rough year for many folks, and I love reading your blog to feel a little less like the world just makes me feel small all by myself. at least I’m not alone!
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I buy every used copy I find. I feel like I’m rescuing it.
I love the Harry Potter books…all of them. The fisrt book I re-read was The Secret Garden. From age 8 to about 15, I would read it at least once a year; usually during Christmas break.
I’m somewhere between you and Victor. I haul my books everywhere but I don’t write in them. I write passages in a separate journal. It’s the neat freak in me.
I try to by two copies of books I love, one to keep and the other to wear the soul out of. Love finding old beat up books in the used book store because You can tell they have been loved. Just like people, the more scars the more story there is (hope that makes sense).
I’ve read and re read The Chosen about a million times.
I also just lent out my copy of Furiously Happy to a friend’s girlfriend who is suffering from depression. She needed it more than me, I hope if it comes back it comes back worn with love 🙂
I’m on Victor’s side YOU MONSTER!
Ellen Hopkins’ Crank series. I like to read books about broken people.
I’m super excited about your coloring book. I’m going to color the crap out of that thing.
I book is not a book unless you can feel the pages.
I would love a copy! Just throwing my hat in the ring.
My most beloved book is As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann. It’s about a man who flees his wedding for spoilery reasons and takes up with Cromwell’s Army, where he falls in love with a fellow soldier. It’s gorgeously written and romantic and utterly heartbreaking and infuriating, because even though Jacob (the main character) does some truly horrific things, I kept wanting him to be happy and then had to take several moments to admire the kind of masterful writing that would make me root for someone who (spoiler) and (spoiler).
I want one, please! I’m your biggest fan, woo ha ha ha ha! Just kidding, I’m not a stalker. I just discovered your blog, and I love it! I work as a counsellor and am also a creative writing student. I feel like I’m well deserving! If not, thats OK. I wish you lots of success with your book. Looking forward to your updates. Hugs! I’m Canadian.
My grandparents notated, dog-eared, wrote research they’d thought to make. There are newspaper articles and poems and letters stuck in their books. I love reading a book & knowing what it made my grandmother think. Once, my uncle lent out a book to a neighbor by a relatively well-known author & the neighbor came back almost immediately with it because there was a letter from the author inside it. (My grandmother wrote to authors, deep thoughts on what they’d written, questions, research. And would often end up in a conversation a dozen letters deep.) I love these books, love them. Although I only have two of my grandmother’s books, they’re treasures.
I do the same with my books. (Everyone’s been warned.)
My favorite books are probably the Harry Potter series, but that’s probably just because my husband read them all to me over the course of the first year we were together. we would finish each day with a chapter or two. My next favorites are Sherlock Holmes and Miss Peregrine’s home for Peculiar Chldren…
Gaiman & Pratchett, Good Omens. We’ve destroyed one copy – despite being very careful with it! It’s been reread that many times. Pratchett’s Small Gods gets a lot of love too, as does Monstrous Regiment. And when I’m feeling particularly useless and/or vulnerable, Mercedes Lackey’s Magic’s Pawn gets pulled out and certain sections reread.
I would love a copy of You Are Here! Even though I already pre-ordered…nothing wrong with sharing!!
I don’t like the new “electronic” book craze. I love the pages, cracking open a new book, the smell of a book! And of course my stack of crazy bookmarks!!
Some of my favorites are Pippi Longstocking, The Outsiders, and Outlander.
My favorite book (other than your books) is Persuasion by Jane Austen. I read it over and over and I dropped my copy in the bath so many times it finally gave up and disintegrated. So now I only have a Kindle copy. I also pick up Jane Eyre and read it from wherever it opens to at any given time and then put it down and pick it up again some other day. But honestly, lately, I have been reading Furiously Happy over and over again. I finish it and start back at the beginning. It has helped me a lot in the last few months. I thank you for that. It has pages bookmarked so I can come back to the parts I really need when I really need them. Oh, and I also have one other book full of post-its. It is So Anyway… by John Cleese.
The Golden Book of Fairy Tales, illustrated by Adrienne Segur. Republished in the past decade under this name. I think it used to be called the Blue Fairytale Book when I had the earlier edition from 1958. An absolute piece of magic in every way. I have no doubt that this book has inspired many artists and writers over the decades!
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, The Belgariad and Malloreon series by David Eddings, Harry Potter, Let’s Pretend this Never Happened. I could go on and on, love books!
There’s nothing better than a beautifully loved book, especially when you can share it with another. Some of my most treasured possessions are a set of Louisa May Alcott books that were my grandmother’s, that have my mother’s crayon scribbles on the first inside pages. They’ve got my family’s fingerprints all over them, and I can’t wait to pass them on to my niece when she’s old enough to appreciate them.
For me, some of my favorite books are A Wrinkle in Time and A Swiftly Tilting Planet. The Stand by Stephen King. My Harry Potters. And so many more.
And I would love a copy of your new book.
People Who Say Goodbye by PY Betts, an independent 21st century woman stuck in the early 1900s. Hard to find, but worth the search.
I love how it looks like the title is bursting out of that page! I agree… there is something amazing about well-loved physical things – I weave, and I was so excited to see when a friend showed me a woven piece that she had worn down to tatters. She was all sad that it was “ruined” – but I felt excited that it had actually been loved so much it was worn out.
My favorite book is always the next one I’m going to read!
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith — a tale of a girl who also loves books.
The term for that (at lest the marking-up part) is ‘marginalia’. I tend to think it’s a sign that you got so much out of the book that a bit of it splashed back onto it.
Love, love, love To Kill a Mockingbird. Also Mark Pryor’s Hugo Marston series(he lives in your neck of the woods!), and Anthony Doerr’s Four Seasons in Rome.
I wear out books, too.
A few I’ve worn to bits: Harriet The Spy, A Wrinkle In Time, Little Women, The Shell Seekers, and Firefly Summer.
This is so me. Maybe not the covers off, but I definitely love my books hard. The best ones have food and water spilt on them. Some of them I’ve even written in. The most loved book I have ever own is White Oleander by Janet Fitch. Some margins are completely filled and entire pages highlighted completely and I never used it for a class. 🙂
I totally encompass the both sides of this. I will buy a copy to love and if I really really love it, I will buy a copy to cherish untouched. I don’t buy a lot of books twice. Most I love only enough to well-love. Yours (Harry Potter, Bibles, The Time Traveler’s Wife), I buy twice.
Faves–Maria Doria Russell’s The Sparrow and Children of God, Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Stephen King’s The Dark Half and Dark Tower series, plus whatever I happen to be reading at the time (currently, The Dresden Files).
A long way gone by Ishmael Beah
I do this with sheet music. You can tell the ones I love because they are literally fingerprinted to the point of being stained and usually falling apart as well. Jenny, I love your transparency and your willingness to blog during the dark times. It’s a real gift to others, though I’m sure it doesn’t feel like it.
OMG I thought I was weird for buying previously loved books! I get so excited when I find a note written inside. Glad to hear it’s not odd….or at least not odd with us.
I would LOVE a copy of You Are Here! Thank you for all that you do 🙂
Jenny, you are a Godsend. Your writing is so many of the good things in life: pain, laughter, fear, embarrassment, truth. You are refreshing and I am so grateful to journey through life with you. We are all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad. Thank you for being brave enough to open yourself up to the world. You are the hero I needed! Much love to you!
-Angie <3
I would love a copy of your book. I can already smell it being printed. Can’t wait to write in it 🙂
I work in libraries and have become almost obsessive over repairing and taking care of books. Yesterday I was reading the first Harry Potter to my 7year old and I was thinking about how tattered it had become, but I was thinking of all the times I have read it, and read it to my husband and my children, and my oldest reading it to herself, and I felt like it deserved some tangible proof of all that love.
I would love a copy, especially because I live in Brazil and won’t be able to buy it so soon 🙁 Answering your question: Bellweather Rhapsody (if you don’t know it, you should; Kate Racculia based one of the characters in David Tennant – and then freaked out when she saw my pictures with him) / The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy / 1984. Also, I’m reading my own book, thanks to you 🙂
I have a tattered copy of Alice in Wonderland from my childhood, I still read it when reality is just too taxing and I need to escape for a while. I would lovingly and artistically destroy your new book as well 🙂
Favorites: The Blue Sword (anything by Robin McKinley, really) and The Hobbit. I can wait to read/color/love your new one.
I desperately want your book, as a reminder of all the places I am when I’m there.
And books I cannot get enough of…
“Pawn of Prophecy” by David Eddings
Lamb” by Christopher Moore – or really, all of his books.
“A Wrinkle In Time” – Madeline L’Engle
“Matilda” Roald Dahl
I used to read in a tree, so my childhood favorites had bite marks from me climbing the tree with the book in my teeth, and all sorts of creases and smudges from being tossed to the grass before I climbed down. The Secret Garden, Matilda, and Treasure Island eventually fell apart completely.
So excited for the coloring book! Glad you’re sharing your art with us.
I would LOVE your new book
S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. I love both of your books so much I have them in hardcover, ebook and audiobook form. Mister God, This is Anna. I’ll probably have to get at least 2 copies of the coloring book because one will end up getting lovingly deconstructed.
Also, I got my Mom both of your books, which she has read… and now she’s apologized to me for all the times she told me I was “weird on purpose” when I was a teenager. I tried and tried to tell her it was the way I was hard-wired and she didn’t get it… until she read your books. So, much love for FINALLY bringing some understanding of the strangeling I am to my Mom.
Stiff: The curious life of human cadavers by Mary Roach. This is my most loved book. I laugh. I cry. I laugh some more. I recommend this book to everyone. And one of the footnotes was a reading at my wedding (my husband loves me and gets me and agreed it was a perfect fit for our wedding).
And between my husband and I, we’ve killed a couple of the Wheel of Time books (books 1 and 2) from reading and lending.
But I’m with Elizabeth, if you dog eat my pages – I will cut you! And then give you a homemade bookmark to teach you how to properly read books!
COLORING BOOOOOOOOK!!! I want one!
Also, I’ve always loved the Clan of The Cave Bear by Jean Auel, EVERYTHING by Neil G, Wyrd Sisters from Terry Pratchett. Brené Brown. And anything by you!
I’m nicer to books now,or maybe I just buy hardcovers more often, but when I was in middle school I loved my paperback copy of Black Beauty to death! I even made it a new cover out of construction paper. Yes I still have that copy. And other well loved books. I would love a copy of your new book.
Not sure why, but for some reason I always go back to Under the Tuscan Sun. I dream of being in her place and seeing the things she describes and eating the foods she cooks. I love the book so much that I refuse to watch the movie. Too many changes to make it “Hollywood”.
I get where you are both coming from. I usually end up buying 2 (or more) copies of the books I love – one to sit pristinely on the shelf – and one to read the hell out of.
My parents think you should read a book once and never again. They tend to look at me like I’m nuts when they see how crack my book spines are.
Fav books run from Pride and Prejudice to Karen Marie Moning – Fever Series and of course Furiously Happy and Let’s Pretend this Never Happened!
I reread “Drawing Blood” by Poppy Z. Brite every year. That book and “Metamophosis” by Franz Kafka saved my life.
Just loaned a guide book to a friend for her trip to Seoul. I asked my husband if he thought we should put our name in it, hoping to get it back. No, he said, guide books are best shared, and used as often as possible, not hoarded on the off chance we’ll get back to Korea.
Love that sentiment.
Ooo! Pick me! I would love a copy of You Are Here. 🙂
American Gods by Neil Gaiman.
Good Omens by Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.
Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. We got the illustrated version of this and it is getting so much love in my house.
I’m somewhere in between you and Victor, I think. I love and cherish my books as much and more than just about anything, possibly excepting my pets and spouse. So I never… intentionally… damage them. And I do have quite a few that sit on my shelves, looking only slightly worse for wear than when I bought them. But then there’s my copy of The Giver or my Dark is Rising books, or any of the ones that have suffered the fate of making me love them enough to forget that I want them to be perfect. It’s like the old skin horse tells the Velveteen Rabbit, you’re only REAL when you’ve been loved enough that your fur has come off and your button eyes have been lost.
My favorite was my childhood copy of Watership Down, though. It came to me already heavily ‘loved’ and I didn’t much help. It lost its cover. I made it a new one out of construction paper. It eventually lost that one, too. Now it lives a much more careful life as its spine is going and I fear it will join my copy of Ivanhoe in being more of a puzzle than a book someday soon.
Dog ear not dog eat! Although if your dog ate my pages I’d probably be a little pissed off. And then laugh. A lot.
Forgot to say my favorite books are
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
And
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
I would love one. I think you are brilliant. Thanks for writing.
I love “The Blue Castle” by LM Montgomery and wore my copy out. So I found another copy in the same edition (very important that it matches the rest of her books). Went to shelve it and found…I had already bought a backup copy. I’m good for the next twenty years at least.
I keep most of my books in pretty good condition, but I’m going to be coloring the crap out of your next one! I could read Still Life with Woodpecker over and over again.
Loving a book so much that it breaks under your spell is why I don’t do ebooks. I like feeling, smelling, becoming part of them too. I love A Confederacy of Dunces, Charlotte’s Web, To Kill a Mockingbird (of course), The Goldfinch, both books by our own Jenny L., all the Harry Potter books ,anything by Elmore Leonard or Richard Price and too many more to even think about or try to list. I’m a poor-man’s professional writer (meaning, I write advertising and marketing copy for high-tech stuff), but words are my life and my love every day.
Oh my goodness! I love writing in my books, underlining my favorite bits, sometime writing
I have so many beloved books that look this way. Some of my favorites are by Anne Rice and Stephen King. I have to use a Kindle now to do most of my reading due to my hands hurting to much to hold a book for long but the love for losing myself in another world has never gone away.
I wanted to show a picture of one of my kids’ books–The Berenstain Bear and The Great Honey Hunt. It was originally a hardback book, but both covers are LONG gone. To be fair it was that way when we bought it at a used book sale at the library. And then my kids totally fell in love with it and I read it dozens if not hundreds of times to them. THEY DID NOT CARE that the covers were missing. The loved the heart and soul of the book, not it’s appearance. My kids are now 29 and 31. I am saving that book to read to their children someday and hope that they also can see the heart and soul of the book, and not just it’s looks.
My most well loved books are never on my book shelves because I lend them to everyone I know. Except my autographed copy of Slaughterhouse 5. Don’t get near that. I’ll cut you.
Books that I can’t get enough of:
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (which if all you lovely weirdos haven’t read go do it now- the main character can literally read her way into books aka our dreamland)
Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card
Love a copy of your newest (and excitingly different) book. In a world of adders and subtractors, you are an adder (not like the snake, not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Cheers.
In the Company of Newfies. I no longer have my book and have no idea where it went. I think it got lost in a move during a divorce. One thing I loved about it was that my own Newfie had actually chewed on it. I keep looking for it but alas it has been years. This makes me want a new one.
https://www.amazon.com/Company-Newfies-Shared-Life/dp/0967853311
A new one I am discovering is called Buddhist Bootcamp. Its good stuff.
https://www.amazon.com/Buddhist-Boot-Camp-Timber-Hawkeye/dp/0062267434/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1470773429&sr=1-1&keywords=buddhist+bootcamp
I am like victor. I am obsessed with books and reading and I keep all of my books in perfect condition. They are my babies and I don’t let anyone else borrow them for fear of them being ruined. On the other hand, I do like reading books that have other people’s thoughts and notes in them because it’s interesting to read, just as long as those books aren’t mine!
A circle of quiet by Madeline L’Engle, Those Who Hunt the Night by Barbara Hambly, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by who else? , and The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. My all time favorite was Bunnicula by James and Deborah Howe. I love bunnies, vampires, and terrible humor. I actually photocopied my library’s copy of Bunnicula back in the early 90’s with my mom’s copy machine. It ran out of ink. I still have the photocopy though. ;D
I have a copy of Swan Song by Robert Mc Cammon that has been taped back together multiple times since chunks of it randomly fall out while I’m reading it. Also a copy of The Shining that has a designer spine of checkerboard duck tape holding it together. ❤️
I read more than my friends and used to love saving my favorites for particular people, because I detest clutter and don’t like things to weigh me down. So, of course, my husband bought me a kindle so I wouldn’t have those extra things weighing me down. And I really do appreciate the thought and I like it (especially that I can read into the wee hours and not keep him up), but I miss passing along my loves to my friends. Not so much that I’ll go back to hard copies (nothing like forgetting your book at the doctor’s office and being able to pull it up on your phone and pick up where you left off – woo hoo!) but enough that it’s a little sad. No one really reads a book you recommend. But they did read the ones I gave them. 🙂
I really really need your coloring book. Like really. I will love it to pieces. 🙂
If you’ve never read Skallagrig by William Horwood please do, it’s been everywhere with me, it makes me laugh, cry, hope and dream.
Can’t wait for your next book!
Hey there, I’ve loved books ever since my mom made me take remedial reading classes as a young girl. She says she made a monster, lol. My favourite books are Cell and Dome by Stephan King and I will happily reread anything by Anne McCaffery.
I don’t reread books for some reason, even opough I like them and keep them … but I love the idea of finding well loved books at estate sales and reading them with the ghosts who owned them … sounds kinda creepy, but I like it!
Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg, The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker, Little, Big by John Crowley, Dope by Sara Gran. Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathon Lethem, The Cowardly Lion of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson and The last Policeman Trilogy by Ben H Winters
I’m pretty sure my copy of Flowers for Algernon gets rearranged every time I read it because it’s mostly loose pages now. And I’m not entirely sure if it ever did have a cover……
One of my favorite books is Douglas Adams’, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” I really like the care with which Adams assembled his words, “just so.” I have a tendency to replace books that get too worn (heaven help me if they go out of print!). More often than not, I lend them out before I wear them out, then have to replace them… I’m lucky that I can do this. Hope your days ahead are bright, Jenny!
I would LOVE a copy of one of your new books! And I agree. I prefer to get books already battered, preferably with a name written in it so I can wonder about who they are (hope that doesn’t sound creepy).
Lamb by Christopher Moore
Too Much Temptation by Lori Foster (anything by her, actually!)
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Furiously Happy by whatshername in Texas
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
I would love a coloring book, but I have pre-ordered one. If I were to win one from your blog, I would gift it to a friend that needs the therapy/support/laughs/calm.
I treasure books. And I use them gently. With care and affection. I may write in them, but I do so neatly. I may flag pages that I will refer back to, and dog-ears are fine, too. But I’d never destroy a book. I actually re-use books for art projects as well. Not the same thing at all. Respect the books!
I very much enjoy your books and your blog. They make me smile even on rough days.
And, yes, I’m looking forward to your new book, and I’d love to get one from you!!
I would love a copy of your newest book! One of my favorite books is The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. And most Dr. Seuss books.
My family do not understand this either. I like owning books so that they are mine and I can turn over the corners and love them. Whenever I move house they are the first thing to be unpacked because home cannot be home without them.
Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (I think I own 11 or 12 unique editions of this book now, all of which have been read), Haruki Murakami’s Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises are my all time favorites.I love them all so so much.
I couldn’t agree more!!! I have a bunch of my great-grandmother O’Bannon’s books. She always wrote in the fromt cover where she got it, from whom (if applicable), and the date (she did this on all her furniture, too)! I feel like she’s with me when I open those books!
My “go to” books = Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, Trina Paulus’ Hope for the Flowers, and Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart.
I would LOVE a coloring book!!!
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz
Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver
I love your book love, Jenny.
My copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, which I re-read every year, is shriveled from being dropped in the tub and bears random tea stains and chocolate smudges. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I was raised to love reading; our family tradition for generations has been to teach our young ones to read before sending them off to school (if they ever went), and we have always taken that to heart. Reading opens the mind, but also the soul, and I will forever be grateful for this lesson my mother passed on to me. That said, she also viewed books as sacred – probably a throwback from her mother who was raised in the Great Depression – and dog ears, broken spines, and stains were signs to her that we did not value or respect what she considered dear. While I like the idea of keeping things clean and beautiful for posterity, I have never been able to love and yet still preserve my books in pristine condition. I really secretly thought there might be something wrong with me, my irreverent nature gone too far or something. So thanks for the affirmation!
I know I can get a copy of a You are Here off the internet but I’m a local kinda girl. So I’m trying to get Changing Hands Bookstore to order a few in. It was one of your stops on your tour.
My favorite fiction: “Stranger at Killknock” by Leonard Wibberley.
My favorite nonfiction: “Le Ton Beau de Marot” by Douglas Hofstadter.
I’m a book-preserver – it really runs against my nature to do anything permanently damaging to a book. I will tolerate an author’s autograph; even that seems kind of sinful, but only a little, like taking the Lord’s name in vain by saying “Gosh darn it”.
“like reading with ghosts”. Makes me sad and happy all at once.
I try not to break spines because then pages come loose and then I lose them and then the 300th time I’m reading the book I wonder where did that one scene go where…and I realize I have lost pages. But I do all the rest though it is much easier to highlight and note using my Kindle. I sheepishly admit that I buy very few actual paper books. Most are electronic now
My 2 year old daughter carried around my copy of Furiously Happy because she was in love with the cover. I couldn’t read it with her in the room because she would take it from me. I’m so excited about the new book because I will be able to share and enjoy it with her.
I would LOVE a copy of your new book! And I agree. I prefer books to be already battered once I get them, preferably with a name written in it so I can wonder about the person (hope that doesn’t sound too creepy).
I have multiple copies of my favorites – you can tell where they come in my chronology by their physical shape. The more time I’ve spent with them, the worse off they are.
L.M. Montgomery – Anne Shirley and Emily of New Moon series
Madeleine L’Engle – any and all
Louisa May Alcott – again, any and all
James Michener – Space
I just cannot bring myself to write in my books, but I do use lots and lots of super sticky post-its for comments, pictures, prayers, and song lyrics.
the Maud Hart Lovelace Betsy-Tacy books, The Princess Bride, Frankenstein, Pride & Prejudice, Jane Eyre, anything by David Rosenfelt (because, Dogs!)
David Sedaris’ “Me Talk Pretty One Day”. I read it for years through my parents’ (ugly, bankrupting) divorce, then brought it with me to college, then Belgium…then I started learning French! The second half of the book is mostly about Sedaris learning French, and I hadn’t even thought of it, but it became even better all over again. I met Sedaris a couple years ago and he signed my copy and gave me a little card. Then I went to France, with my book!
Jenny, I hope you’ve read 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff, because she is pretty much you in a lot of ways, down to the book thing. If you don’t have it, I will get it for you–I’m that serious.
I have wept into more than one copy of The Return of the King. My original copy of A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle looks like a rat has been at it. I can hardly touch my Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide anymore–the pages are all falling out. It’s not that I’m purposely cavalier with them, but my books are my closest friends and I take them everywhere I go, and I am a bit clumsy at times. I have a few first editions and things that were given as gifts and items that I bought as antiques that I try to be more careful with, but if it’s something I love very much it’s probably going to show that love on its pages and covers somewhere.
Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy is a book I read at least once a year and have for years and years–my ultimate comfort book. I have multiple copies, worn and preserved and now there’s an audio version. So there is that. Also Robert Graves’ I, Claudius and Claudius the God. And many others. SO looking forward to being hard on You Are Here though I am usually fairly anal retentive about books….. 🙂
Oh, please include me in the randoms for a free copy of your book. It will go in the “gifts I’m not sure who to give, but I’ll know when the time is right” bag. Mine is already on order. Favorite book list must include Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale. 🙂
I leant a friend a book a few years ago, and she comes to me a week later, almost in tears, because her young daughter had grabbed the book and tore part of the cover and wrote on the inside. She offered to buy a new copy and I just laughed. I told her it was a book, it was made to be loved and now I have a reminder of her and her daughter every time I read it!
a tree grows in brooklyn – i have the paper back copy i bought when i was 9 (and read and re-read over and over again.) i also have a hardcover edition given to me by my best friend. the paperback is 43 years old, the hardcover is 29 years old,as is the friendship.
all of the aubrey/maturin series (patrick o’brian) because they’re spectacular and so not what i typically read.
I adore old books. Especially ones with dedications in them. It makes me wonder about that pair of strangers that shared a love of books. I wonder if they both loved the book I’ve found and if they had long talks about it later. One of my favorite found books is Walk Egypt by Vinnie Williams. I highly recommend it to most everyone I meet. Another book I always recommend (though it isn’t one I found, but had to buy for grad school) is Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya. It is a book I reread every time I feel like I can’t write. It makes me fall in love with words and storytelling all over again and reignites my own creative fire.
My granddaughter loves to color with colored pencils adult coloring books. I buy them for her all the time. This would be pedc for her.
I read so many books but buy only the ones I absolutely love. I have bought your books and reread them again and again. As a mother of children who suffer from anxiety and depression they are a wonderful resource.
Neverwhere, Sense & Sensibility, and the Discovery of Witches trilogy JUDGE ME IF YOU WILL. Also, I buy every book Lisa Kleypas writes, and they are my bubblebath reading. They go wonderfully with wine. Romance, Regency-ish era, smart women and men who deserve them. Good stuff.
And to the lady up there who xeroxed Bunnicula? You and I are soulmates. That was my favorite. I’d have let you borrow mine.
I have an adorable little (6x4in, maybe) hardback copy of Jane Eyre, that I keep in my purse. The poor thing is tattered. But it’s like the blanky a kid would carry around- it brings me comfort when I need it. I also generally have my kindle with me, but I agree with others- kindle books lack soul.
Years back, in college, I bought a used copy of “Tropic of Cancer” – when the professor asked me a question about a certain (graphic) section, I told him I had not been able to read that chapter, as the pages were stuck together. He never asked me another question all semester.
I really would love a copy of You Are Here…please..please..please.
My girlfriend borrowed my first copy of “Let’s Pretend…” Her kids thought she would enjoy reading it while in the pool. She was mortified to tell me what happened. I told her, it just showed how much she loved it. LOL!
Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series. Have read them dozens (x infinity) of times in the last 2 decades.
Furiously happy is wonderful. Would love you upcoming one 🙂
Oddly enough, my favorite book is “The Good Earth” which I first read as a young person and something about it called to me. I have multiple copies as I try to find the oldest copies I can. My original copy is falling apart, has a broken spine, dog eared pages and wet spots. It was years before I realized it was a trilogy. I read it at least twice a year.
I met you at a book signing in Wichita (moose hat) and I would love a copy of your new book.
Anne of Green Gables
Little Women
And to quote Little Women = “Some books are so familiar that reading them is like being home again.”
I’d love a copy. Harry potter will always be a favourite. The sixth book in particular.
I will never not love Of Mice & Men or The Outsiders. Also, The Scorpio Races because such love between a young man and a killer sea monster horse. The writing is spine-tingling.
Today I got a shipment of my own books in. My first series. I love them while I’m reading them, but I always feel like they’re such crap after I finish one. I’m so insecure. This set launched my writing career. I am so proud/embarrassed.
Julie Edwards’s The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles. I read it every winter to boost my lagging spirits!
I love Pride and Prejudice, for all its wit, humor, and love. The Daughter of Smoke and Bone series by Laini Taylor is incredibly visual and sexy. The Soulless series by Gail Carriger is another fun supernatural series with fantastic characters and lots of tea.
I have always loved books, but I treat them with more care than I do a crystal wine glass (probably because, well, wine) or porcelain… anything. I can’t think of what is made out of porcelain because people know better than to give me or allow me to hold things made out of porcelain. But the only books I have written in are college and grad school text books…. and doing that made me feel dirty. A broken spine should be the mark of continuous re-reads, not carelessness. However, it’s probably why I haven’t pulled my books out as much since my son has been born. He’s not even allowed paper pages of his own yet. …But I also haven’t been role modeling good reading habits for him because I’ve been protecting my books. If I always wait until he goes to sleep to pull out a book, how will he ever see how much joy it brings me? I’m going to take a page out of your book (figuratively, I mean–let’s not get crazy here) and try to see wear and tear as a badge of honor… and an excuse to go book shopping.
And my absolute favorite book to read is “The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas. I’ve read it over 10 times and discover something new each time. If you want to try it, it’s better drama than a soap opera and no movie can do it justice, but get a copy with a “Cast of Characters” in the front–trust me! After that, I would have to go with the original novel form of the “The Phantom of the Opera.” The ending is actually a bit creepy and when I finished I realized I was home alone (people DID say goodbye, but I didn’t really register it) and it was stormy out, I wouldn’t let my dog leave my side because I didn’t want to be alone. I also love Charles Dickens’ writing and story-telling, but his stories are always so sad that I end up melancholy for days afterwards and have forbidden myself from reading them until I am tough enough to can take it.
Little Women, anything Jane Austen and don’t judge me, but the Twilight books.
And I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE (did I say LOVE) a copy of your new book. 🙂
I don’t even own a Kindle. My cookbooks are the same. If I love a recipe, there are notes and food smears and random grocery lists on the page. My favorite books are the ones I inherited from my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. I love reading the inscriptions. It brings me comfort and continuity. And yes, I dog ear pages too. Books have been my best friends for my entire life. Yours is one of the greatest gifts I have. (Also I just love to open the pages and smell them. I think that’s probably weird. But you can’t smell history in a Kindle.).
Strands of Starlight -Gael Baudino (read repeatedly in hs). University yrs it was American Gods, and anything by Charles de Lint, esp Memory & Dream (magic, art, talking animals, you’d love it) Currently Im inlove with Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. ITS SO GOOD ERMERGERD highly recommended. Can’t wait for the colouring book 🙂
Hmm books that became a part of me, in the ‘I can quote them word for word’ sense or the ‘they changed the way my brain worked so dramatically that I can’t ever read them again’ sense? For the first, most of Terry Pratchett’s discworld novels but primarily the watch books because I want to be Sam Vimes when I grow up, The Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger, Howl’s Moving Castle and House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones. For the second Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce, The Inferno by Dante, The Jungle by Sinclair. My physical books are well loved and worn though right now they are by and large in storage (and have been for several years as we wait for life to settle out so we can find our lifetime home). And I would love a copy of your new book by the way thank you for being awesome!
Yes, please. I would love a copy of your new book. I have just finished rereading the first two (definitely on my favorites list, along with most of what Rita Mae Brown has written), and am about to pass on your first to my first born with the please return this to me request. She knows I am trying to pare down my 5000 plus volume library (it’s so hard!) and will be surprised to learn that I want yours back! As for those who do not like kindle, I must say I was fully in that camp at first. But then someone gave me one. As someone with sleep issues, I often read myself back to sleep in the middle of the night and love the fact that the kindle is keeping my “place” for me while I doze. But for daytime reading, I’m still all old school. Thanks Jenny for this opportunity!
Mine are Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury, The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving and Watership Down by Richard Adams.
I’d also love a copy of your new book! Maybe a book that’s actually meant to be written in would be good for me. I’m definitely on Team Victor on that issue.
My favorite go to book is Dr. Zhivago. It has most everything I love in a book…
I just finished Bellweather Rhapsody and it is brilliant. Plan to stay up late. Anything by Pratchett or Gaiman is on the list. Have you read the Long Earth series? Our HP have all split. We’ve bought three copies so far. Money well spent. My Tolkiens are well-loved. I’m pulling a couple of new suggestions from the comments. Yay for excellent fans of excellent books.
I very much enjoy owning books so that I can turn the corners over and make them mine. If I move house they are the first thing I unpack because home can’t be home without them.
I mostly read fantasy (yay for escaping real life) my favourites include pretty much anything by Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman. Ergonomic by Christopher Paolini, Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovich. My all time favourite is A Little White Horse by Elizabeth Gouge it’s like a hug in book form.
“The Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton. I read it 14 times the first week I got it (I was a teenager). It’s held together with a rubber band. However my original Sandman comic books are in a plastic container in the basement. Not ready for my 8 year-old to find them yet.
Harry Potter – I don’t know how many times I’ve read them now, but still discover something new every time. And I love that my nephew and niece think while reading and make notes in their books. I never learned to do that and have to admit that I am a bit jealous 🙂
Part of me loves a pristine, new book. I feel bad about doing anything to take away that clean state. Except I like to highlight and read and re-read and sometimes my bookmarks are just whatever object is closes and that means bending the spine. I stack my books wherever there’s room. I carry them in my bag and they get beat up. It happens.
I would ADORE a copy of your new book! I’m rough on books I love as well (which is why I have Let’s Pretend this Never Happened in ebook as well as hardback because I didn’t want to mess up the one you autographed 🙂 ) As for books I love that are well worn, Anne of Green Gables, Wuthering Heights, Verses that Hurt, The Giver, and Alice in Wonderland.
My “go to” books are anything in the Valdemar series by Mercedes Lackey. I can just pick any of them up, and open to a random page, and enjoy reading. I also love Marianne Williamson’s A Return to Love, and have it all dog-eared and highlighted.
I would also love a copy of your new book when it comes out.
This is why I often buy 2 copies of my most beloved books. One to read to pieces and one to treasure.
My favorites: Isaac Asimov: Foundation Trilogy
Little Women
Wuthering Heights
Eight Cousins
The Merry Gentry Series (Laurell K. Hamilton)
Surviving Survival – Laurence Gonzales; Happy All the Time – Laurie Colwin; Trauma and Recovery – Judith Herman; The Prince of Tides – Pat Conroy; The Shipping News – Annie Proulx; Animal Dreams – B. Kingsolver. I’ve had to buy replacements of each as they wear out.
I scribble in many of my books to mark things to remember but some I don’t. So I guess I’m like both of you. I too love to look over old books. One of my favorites is a copy of The New Garden Encyclopedia – the Victory Garden Edition (1943) which is full of someone’s garden notes and pressed flowers. Oh, and recently I found a tiny ledger from 1944 that was a man’s accounting notes. He included all his weekly budgeting which gave a surprising view of his life. It ended right before he shipped off with the Army. When I look over it I always hope he came home okay.
I loved seeing your book recommendations and those from other people! I’m always looking for new books to read so this is wonderful.
Thank you so much for putting your thoughts out there. I smile every time there is a new blog post.
I’ve listened to both of your books on audiobook and just love hearing you describe each story. I can’t wait for you new book to come out so I can color in it! I would love a free copy!
Replied with photo on Twitter:
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I think I love you even more after reading this!!! I share that passion of finding old books that have told more stories than just the ink on their pages. There’s a certain feel to the pages and sound in the spine. I have so many “favorite” books, but the one I read most recently that really touched me was When Breath Becomes Air. I also love the magical world of Harry Potter! (but come on, who doesn’t?!) I would love a copy of your new book, You Are Here. Cannot wait for it tocome out!
I’m the exact way with my books and I hate borrowing from people who never turn down a corner! I love Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Warmth of Other Suns, all of the Outlander books, Harry Potter, and I love almost all of Anne Rice’s books, especially The Witching Hour and any of her books set in New Orleans. Now I want to go back and read some of these again! Thanks!
I totally understand the bathtub damage. Which is why I bought a Kobo H2O that could survive a dunking. Unfortunately it can’t withstand an accidental step on, so that only lasted 2 months.
For my favorite books:
Need to think: Anne Bishop’s The Others series, first book is Written in Red
Need to cry: Mercedes Lackey’s Collegiate series, reading about Mags always hurts
Need something dark: Nalini Singh’s Guild Hunter series or Ilona Andrews’ Kate Daniels series or Keri Arthur’s Riley Jensen series
Need to laugh, sigh, fall in love or gave fun: Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changling series, Lynsay Sands Vampire books (the first 5), Shelly Laurenston/G.A. Aiken- anything she has written.
Don’t need the coloring book as I already preordered 2 of them.
I’d love love LOVE a copy!
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. Tolkien. Good Omens by Pratchett and Gaiman. Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey books. Loved so hard I’ve had to replace them multiple times.
I’m a combination of you both. I am careful of some of my books – signed first editions and such, but I also have copies that are read and loved almost to death.
I tend to take care of hardbacks and be less gentle with paperbacks..
Favourites include ‘American Gods’, pretty much anything by Diana Wynne Jones, but particularly ‘The Lives of Christopher Chant’ and ‘Dogsbody’, Jane Austen’s ‘Persuasion’, Susan Cooper’s ‘Dark is Rising’ series.
I recently had to replace my copy of Georgette Heyer’s ‘A Civil Contract’ – it’s been a heap of pages held together with elastic bands for a while, but now I’m missing about 2 dozen pages, so I have to get a new copy…
Peter Pan, which I reread every time I’m having a hard day, and The Exorcist, my copy of which is in 4 pieces. I have a Peter Pan tattoo on my forearm because it truly my favorite book. Til We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis is another one that I couldn’t possibly live my life without.
“extravagaria” by Pablo Neruda. It’s on its last legs and is full of dog ears (I have no shame). I once lost it and my wife felt bad so she bought a new copy, but it wasn’t the same. It never felt as good in my hands as my original copy. It was like when parents find the dead hamster and replace it with one that looks similar before the kid notices…but I noticed. I found the original during a move a couple years ago and it was like Christmas Day. I was so happy and so relieved to know it wasn’t gone forever because it’s irreplaceable to me.
Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. Alden Bell’s The Reapers Are the Angels. The Dark Tower series and The Stand, Stephen King.
I never leave comments, but I had to on this one. I am a bookseller, and books (even ones I don’t like) are objects of love and obsession. I love them as objects, the smell of the paper and ink, the deckel cut pages, decorated end-papers….Some of my favorites are The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In a Ship of Her Own Making, a wonderful book by Catherynne Valente, and S., by J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorst. S. is a facsimile of a stolen library book, complete with colored ink marginalia and loose inserts of letters, newspaper articles, postcards, etc., all in aid of solving a mystery about the vanished author.
Other than The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I love your books the best!! 🙂
Rift, by Liza Cody. And I would love a copy of your new book.
There’s totally Cheetos dust all over mine.
Sometimes the tattered pages contain the most memorable memories. Leonard Cohen’s “Beautiful Losers”, which I still consider a literary masterpiece.Sheldon Currie’s “Down The Coaltown Road” is one that is lesser known but I highly recommend it. He’s the author who wrote the novel turned into a film called “Margaret’s Museum”. Two recent ones I’ve started to wear out already are Carol Leifer’s “How To Succeed in Business Without Really Crying” and Sara Benincasa’s “Real Artists Have Day Jobs” are so epic as far as golden words of wisdom. I have writing and post it notes all over the pages of these ones.
Have a good rest of the day, week and beyond.
Whale Music by Paul Quarrington. Written in the first person, from the perspective of a broken, drug-riddled former rock icon who is full of grief and confusion in equal measure. Fractured in such a wonderful way that I re-read it every year or two.
As a kid, the “Story Girl” book by Lucy Maude Montgomery, and Trumpet of the Swan by I know not who.
Poirot books by Agatha Christie. I’m finally starting to collect them all — in second-hand paperbacks only. 🙂
The Black Cauldron series by Lloyd Alexander. (Yes, I know they’re actually the Prydain Chronicles.)
Humbug Mountain by Sid Fleischman.
Dragon’s Breath by E. D. Baker.
Asterix books! 😀
Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh.
Brains vs Coffee by Ghoul Friday.
Avatar: The Promise books 1-3. (I forcibly had to stop buying Avatar books, as I can’t afford to buy a series! But they’re really well done.)
A variety of Eloisa James books; currently trying to hunt down my favourites second-hand, as they’re currently only on my e-reader.
Oh, too many! 🙂
I would also like to be put in the random draw, please. 🙂 Thank-you!
My copies of Bloom County Babylon and Penguin Dreams and Stranger Things have resided in the bathroom of every house I’ve lived in since I bought them. Tattered, falling apart and probably full of effluvia of the grossest kind and yet, they are always within reach when I really need them – my favorite history books.
I loved “The Help.” I had borrowed it from a friend and couldn’t put it down. This meant also reading in the tub. I was super embarrassed to return her book to her after I realized the damage the steam rising from my bath had caused, but I could not afford to replace it. My only hope now is that she read this blog and realize it was love that warped her once flat pages.
My books are my friends. They live on my book shelves, carefully dusted and displayed. I take them out sometimes and just hold them in my hands. I’ve learned wonderful and horrible things from books; some make me laugh, some cry.
David Eddings series’ The Belgariad & the Malloreon are my favorites because I read them to my son when he was about 12 years old. I’ve read them over and over again and love them just as much now as the first time. I even read them to The Viking just to get him hooked and then he finished them himself.
Cold Mountain is so beautifully written it’s like a song.
Anything from Margaret George and Sharon Kay Penman.
My lists go on and on and on. Show me a book and I’ll read it.
And I definitely want your new book so I can read it and keep it like a friend. :o)
A couple of my favourites are The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, and When God was a Rabbit, by Sarah Winnman.
I would love a copy of You Are Here.
I agree with the very first comment that said the thing they hate about Kindle books is they lack soul. Kindles don’t smell like books. They aren’t books. Anyway, some of my most favorite and destroyed books are books I’ve had since childhood, they are literally books written for children and teens and they taught me some important lessons that I sometimes find myself needing to go back and relearn.
I absolutely adore Ken Follet’s “Pillars of the Earth” and “The Thorn Birds” by Colleen McCullough. I have very well worn and loved copies of those books. And would love a copy of your new book because your current two books are definitely on my list of faves! They have been lent out to friends and well loved as well!
I’ve already pre-ordered, but I’d love one to share! I love Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann and any Robert Frost poetry book.
this is exactly why i have multiple copies of books.
my most loved are lamb by christopher moore, instructions by neil gaiman, one hundred years of solitude by gabriel garcia marquez, a head full of ghosts by paul tremblay, and let’s pretend this never happened by, of course, jenny lawson. eventually i hope to have a poppet of each by lisa snellings. i already have my instructions poppet.
I love all kinds of books, My favorite author is Stephen King. However, a book from my childhood is called “Old Cat and the Kitten.” I loved that book and read it over and over until the it was tattered and torn. I recently found my copy of this book and read it to my children.
My copy of “The Great Gatsby” has been to hell and back. Partly because it was part of a designated reading assignment in High School, and I loved it so much I just decided to keep it. I put packing around the edges of the paper cover so I would stop fraying and ripping.
M box set of the Lord of the Rings is looking a little haggard too, but it’s a hardcover so it’s a little more durable. Only a little more though, I’ve had it for almost 15 years!
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Hours – Michael Cunningham
Elegance of the Hedgehog – Muriel Barbery
The Words to Say It – Marie Cardinal
Paula – Isabel Allende
The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman
A few years ago, I took an altered book art class. At first, it felt like complete sacrilege to tear pages out of a book or glue and paint inside of it. Then it was totally freeing and gave me a way to show love to books that no one else wanted anymore. Now I use old books or old book pages in most of my art journaling/artwork. I always search for them at garage/estate sales or antique stores. My favorite find so far is the journal of a high school girl from the early 1940s. She drew in it, pasted newspaper clippings from events she was in, and wrote stories about her senior year in high school. That one I won’t tear apart or paint in, I cherish every single page.
I would absolutely love to get a copy of You Are Here if I’m lucky enough! I absolutely love both of your books and have helped me get through some rough patches. I sent a copy of “Furiously Happy” to my best friend who had a really bad bout of depression awhile ago and she absolutely loves it as well. If I had to pick a couple of my favorite books to share, I would pick “Silver Linings Playbook” by Matthew Quick and “Airborn” by Kenneth Oppel. Thanks for always being you, Jenny.
I love how you look for books that have been well loved. It’s fascinating what you can learn about a person that way. I’m a bit anal so I baby my books, plus I read a ton digitally so I try not to dog ear my nook. My fave books all include strong romantic elements, the more intense the better.
I’m with Victor on this… seeing/hearing people manhandle/womanhandle their books makes me cringe and shudder. I thank all the people in bygone days who took such good care of their literary treasures that I now own some pristine pieces of history… like my 1877 gilt-edged Author’s Edition of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poetical works, signed by the poet himself. None of its pages are broken and weeping in pain and therefore neither am I.
My copy of Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mother’s Garden and Zora Neale Hurston’s Thier Eyes Were Watching God – my copies are from the 1970s, covers falling off, pages well creased – anyone who picks them up later will know that these two books were LOVED.
I love how you look for books that have been well loved. It’s fascinating what you can learn about a person that way. I’m a bit anal so I baby my books, plus I read a ton digitally so I try not to dog ear my nook. My fave books all include strong romantic elements, the more intense the better.
I love my books completely but I am also fairly careful with them. I was a librarian for nearly a decade and it made me a snob. 🙂 So if I adore a book, I also buy it in Kindle format so I can have it with me always, and my physical copy can remain pristine. I love Night my Elie Weisel, The Wolf and the Dove by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, The Stand by Stephen King, The Harry Potter series, obviously. And so many others. I own your previous two books, and I can’t wait to get my hands on the third. 🙂
I used to be very delicate with my books, and honestly, I am still really careful with my Harry Potter books, I guess so my daughter can enjoy them in the pristine condition I was able to enjoy them in, but whatever. But you’re so right about letting books show that they are loved. I’ve recently let some of my books go because, even if I’ve enjoyed them, I know I won’t read them again, so instead of moldering on my shelf, I’ve decided to let them be loved by others, and hopefully many others after that.
Jennifer Crusie’s Agnes and the Hitman; Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None; and Debbie Viguie’s Psalm 23 mysteries (slow-building romance plus character development means a definite win-win).
I used to treat my books with the utmost care. I let someone borrow one of my books and when they returned it all battered I was kind of upset. But one day, looking back at my book collection that one amongst the nearly perfect ones screamed, “I’ve been read! Look how awesome I am!” Now I’m a spine breaker, I keep the dust jackets on and let them tear because it makes me feel like I really read them.
I love to love on my books. Otherwise – what’s the point?
Books that are PART OF ME:
– Fox in Socks by Dr. Suess (it’s makes my daughter happy when I read it to her so I love it!)
– The Harry Potter series by JK Rowling. These books have brought me back from the darkest of places. I consider them one of my most value possessions.
– Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
– To Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
Kindle has its uses, but I need a book that I love to be held in my hands. I’m trying to write something here, but my cat is sitting on my foot and keeps staring at me. She’s creeping me out again. She’s never purred, just snorts loudly. It’s a weird sound.
Robin McKinley’s Sunshine. It’s fantastic and dark and a teeny bit sexy. I’ve read it so many times I’ve lost count.
This I Know Is True by Wally Lamb….I’ve caught my husband trying to throw it away on more than one occasion b/c it is so beaten and battered
I love it when a book is well worn from being read so many times. I have a paperback I got when I was in 4th or 5th grade called Missing Person’s League and I read it over and over, and then my daughter loved it too and also read it over and over, and now the cover is barely hanging on and all patched up with tape, and that just makes it even better. Now I read a lot of books on Kindle, but for books like yours that I know I’ll want to keep forever, I buy the real thing.
A few other books I’ve read many times: Tomorrow’s Children (a collection of 18 science fiction stories edited by Isaac Asimov); Shadow Castle by Marian Cockrell; Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott; The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, and Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass.
I would love to have a copy of your new one!
I love Little Women. And all of the Harry Potter books. And The Time Traveler’s Wife. And A Wrinkle in Time (for some reason!). And too many more to mention.
I also am a book hoarder. I NEVER give away my books for someone to keep but I love to lend my books. But I read them and sleep on them and travel with them. Yes, I am that person at work who walks down the hall to the bathroom reading so I can get an extra few minutes in. . .I am never without a book. I keep “spares” in my car and office even though I usually read on my Kindle now. Yup, I am addicted. 🙂
So, apparently we are the Velveteen Rabbits of books. I sleep, eat and bathe with my books. Almost all of my books are second hand and I love interpreting the tracks of previous owners!
I get the leather bound book smell and the feel of pages on my fingertips… But I LOVE my kindle. Especially now that I’m hiking (for 6 months on the Appalachian Trail). Carrying several hundred books weighs just as much as carrying all 3 of your books Jenny! (I wouldn’t dare to say which makes the bigger contribution to a happier society though😝)
I always love hearing about the differences between you and Victor. Cracks me up!
Yes, please! I can’t wait to deface your book! 🙂
I always struggle to think of the books that have touched me only because there have been so very many. Illusions by Richard Bach which I have read more times then I can count. Good Omens and American Gods. I was given the book P.S. I love you while mourning the death of my uncle and it allowed to sob and access the grief I was hiding inside me. So many books from so many different times in my life
Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favorites. I think it was the first dystopian book I ever read and it scared me by how real it felt. That was years ago and it’s more true now…sigh Happy Book Lovers Day!
I love the Harry Potter series and of course your books – BUT I have them in audio version – so it’s only my phone that gets tattered. I listen to sections over and over at times.
So – the books Mom and I loved going trough from thrift or antique stores were the cookbooks! (and I love bibles – ones with family trees in them but back to cook books) The cookbooks were loving cooks wrote their notes in the margins or book marked certain pages. Or there are recipe cards used as bookmarks – which is an extra bonus because you get a FREE recipe with the book! Novel IDEA! (pun intended)
Thinking about Mom is hard, very hard. 2 months and 17 days since she passed. 🙁
I’m not much for rereading books though one book that I read at least once a year is A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. For some reason this book just makes me really happy. It’s like going on a vacation without having to go anywhere.
I do have books from my own childhood that I loved and which are falling apart from being read so often to my kids, one of which is Roxaboxen. I love that book so hard.
I can read a book and leave it looking untouched. I am a gentle reader. My father-in-law was a rough reader. Broken spines, turned down pages, notes in the margins. It used to make me nuts to read a book after he had.
But after he died and I stumbled across an old book of his and was able to read what he thought of it, to see what passages stood out for him, to have one last conversation about a book we both read? Well, it was special.
I love used and previously well-loved books too. I personally don’t buy a new book unless I know I’m going to read it over and over – I don’t do “one and done.” Consequently I have hundreds of soul-books, not just a few. But the first one I ever destroyed with use was All the Weyrs of Pern by Anne McCaffrey. I upgraded to hardcover for the replacement.
Thanks for sharing your heart and soul with us, light and dark. You are such an encouragement! Can’t wait for the new book. Spring is a long wait away!
I’d love a copy of any one of your books. So far I’ve only read them from the library.
I’ve dived headlong into reading as an escape since my husband died. I couldn’t afford any other vices. I don’t really consider reading a vice…unless you do it to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. My library card is nearly warn through.
I find myself somewhere in the middle on treatment of books. I’m generally pretty careful with mine although I do crack the spines. It took me a while to be able to highlight stuff in college textbooks. I get the willies when I see arts or crafts done with used books. Even though I strongly believe in recycling and many of those old books would just get tossed or left to rot if they didn’t get a new life.
I recall reading about someone who would underline and write and make notes in the margins. And use a different color pen each time they reread. And that way they could see how their thoughts had changed, evolved or not as time passed. I like that idea. If I were going to write in books I hope I’d do something like that. 😉 I love the idea of ghost books. My grandma did a lot of cooking and her cookbooks all had cut out or handwritten recipes tucked in them. I have a couple of them. One has a big beautiful stove burn on the back cover.
As soon as you announced ‘You are here’ I lost it and jumped on my sleeping roommate to scream the news to her because she loves your books as much as I do. If I’m being honest your books are a major part of what has gotten me through the roughest few years of my life and I feel an awkward anxious kinship with you that’s hard to describe, but it gets me through life so who am I to question that. Anyways, other than your books, my favourite would have to be ‘John dies at the end’. I have a dirty, dog eared, creased, copy that’s been through hell and back with me. It’s my comfort book. If things are falling down around me I cling desperately to the words on the page and lose myself for a little bit in the most ridiculous story I’ve ever loved. I’ve read it nine times now with no sign of stopping. I’ve also read your books 4 times, and I’m getting my sister a set for her birthday because I know she’ll undoubtedly find you as endearing as I do <3
Green Angel by Alice Hoffman. I highly recommend it to anyone who’s struggling with grief and depression and loss. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. Sabriel by Garth Nix.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Alice in Wonderland, Th Peculiar Miss Pickett.
Part of me? Danielewsi’s House of Leaves. Greenes It Happened in Boston? (yes the ? is in the title). Everybody Needs a Rock by Peter Parnall, Dissapearing Dwarf and the others in the Cheeser series by Blaylock, I Want My Hat Back, byJon Klassen, Possum Magic, by Mem Fox and Julie Vivas, and McX; a Romance of the Dour. My favorite because it is so good I can’t read it. Every time I try I get the chilly quivers so hard I have to save it for later. Deathbed maybe. And not to curry favor, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened changed my life. At current count I’ve given it to/recommended it to 106 people (I’m a bookseller so it’s easy). Thank you.
I was just reflecting on how I use my books as I purchased yet another set of the David Eddings “Belgariad” series. All my copies are falling apart as they have been so well loved. Books are meant to be used, read, and loved.
Little Women. The Shining. The Dragonriders of Pern series. heart flutters
I LOVE your view on books. I too agree that books are made to be devoured, used, underlined.
“The Changeling” by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, “Anne of Green Gables” by L. M. Montgomery, and “Clan of the Cave Bear” by Jean Auel. I don’t enjoy messing up my books; it just happens. Would love to have your next book.
At first glance, I thought you said, “I use my boobs.” I don’t know if that’s true, but that could make for a blog post that’d get even more reads than usual! 🙂
I love the idea of this book so much, it makes me want to cry (which is appropriate since your first two books had me in tears, albeit from laughter). I’ve been having a bit of a struggle in life lately. I moved abroad a year ago with my partner and the effects of not being able to get a job, struggling with a new language and relating to natives, and being so far away from my people has heightened my already shitty anxiety to the worst it has ever been.
Prior to moving, I hadn’t needed my meds for months and now Im back to relying on them just to get my mind to give me peace for 5 fucking minutes. Needless to say, I hate that I’m back here. As most anxiety ridden people do, I’ve been seeking alternative methods and strategies to keep my mind and hands busy….and like most anxiety ridden people, have had a mixed bag of success and failures.
Coloring therapy has been on my radar, but it’s difficult to find something that inspires me, or simply, that I can relate to that isn’t overly flowery and upbeat. Upon seeing the previews of your new book, I knew I had finally found what I’ve been searching for. Your pictures and designs are some of the most beautiful and unique I’ve seen. Combine that with the fact that your message is something I’m able to connect with and make sense out of, I feel like I’ve found just what I need and I can’t wait to order it.
I was raised in a “Do NOT damage books!” house and then school. Dog-earing was about the worst possible thing that I could imagine. As I grew and became a grown-up, I realized that they were mine to do with as I please and since then I’ve been folding, penciling, and loving my books with abandon. And I love to buy old books. My favorites still have the stickies and the receipts in them from their previous homes.
Also, I love that they didn’t bring a “clean” copy for your autograph. I probably would have 🙂
Susan Fromberg Schaeffer ‘Anya’, JD Salinger ‘Nine Stories’, Betty Smith ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’. I would like to add Jenny Lawson ‘Let’s Pretend This Never Happened’ but I don’t want you to thinki I am sucking up in hopes of getting a free book…that book helped me get through a tough time and made me feel like there is someone out there who gets my sense of humor! It is so hard when you say something meant to be ironically funny and people just stare at you like you are weird as hell.
Gone With the Wind, The Thornbirds, and my childhood favorite The Three Little Puppies.
My “destroyed with love” books are those from my childhood, which I re-read often. 101 Dalmatians (totally tattered/taped/held together with paper clips and dreams), the Little House books, Little Women and Champion Dog: Prince Tom. I also spend a lot of time with Roald Dahl’s Omnibus: Perfect Bedtime Stories for Sleepless Nights.
These days, I tend to check out books from the library or if I do purchase a book, I’ll donate it to the library because I’m trying to save money and avoid building Mt. Clutter.
I don’t know how to create a list of favorite books so I’m going to mention some favorite authors:
Neil Gaiman, Charles de Lint, Alice Hoffman, JRR Tolkein, JK Rowling, John Irving, Christopher Moore, Tom Robbins – and so many more.
I live in a half kindle, half real book world. I haven’t completely committed to the Kindle, but have completely run out of space in the house for any more real books. It’s a conundrum, that’s for sure.
That photo… I detect definite teeth marks! Beloved book. Beloved pet. Beloved interactions, and collaborations. This would make me cry happy tears if it were my book. It’s about to make me cry happy tears for you. DAMMIT JENNY QUIT MAKING ME CRY! <3
My most beloved book might be Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which actually broke into a bunch of pieces because I re-read it so much. My first copy of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened is also super battered cause I would carry it around everywhere to ward off anxiety when I started college. Now I have that copy, which is the one people borrow, and a new one. I would love a copy of You are Here! I will probably eventually buy it but it could take a while because I live in Mexico.
Whenever I am trying to remember that I can choose my own path in life, I reread the DragonSong, DragonSinger, DragonDrums trilogy (the three young adult targeted books from the Dragonriders of Pern series). My Dad gave them to me when I was 11- they have his happy birthday message and my scratch and sniff stickers still in them, 31 years later. I let my son read them and a new tear appeared in the cover of one and I almost cried.
Thank you. Pondering this question is going to have me smiling all day. Cheaper by the Dozen, for sure. I cried when I saw the car that was like theirs at the Pierce Arrow museum. And probably ended up a homeschool parent partially because of this book. Wild About Books, which I can recite. I had been a picture book nerd even before kids. Otherwise I use the heck out of my library. Hmmmmmm.
I drive my husband crazy by buying the saddest copies at Half Price Books instead of brand new ones. I live them to look loved, and be loved. Plus I’m just going to toss them in my purse or drop them in the pool so they might as well not start out too pretty.
Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, Stephen King’s IT & the Stand, Douglas Adam’s Dirk Gently — probably my roughest looking, best loved books.
I’d LOVE a copy of your new book. I’ve read both your others, it’s one of the few books that made me laugh out loud. Once it was rather loudly in bed, I pretended to be choking so my husband wasn’t mad that I woke him up laughing!
Some of my favorites include: the golden compass series by phillip pullman, sabriel by garrg nix, the english patient by michae ondaatje, nos4a2 by joe hill….
I’d love a copy of your new book! Cant wait to experience it and make it well loved.
I want one, please
I’m really enjoying Elena Ferrante’s 4-book series.
My wife has always been the book lover. I am just a book “cover” lover. They usually draw me in. However, your books are the only one’s I’ve read front to back and completely recommended. I think my wife and I can enjoy your next book and be creative together, draw in the pages, and experience your words as one.
My copy of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened is the one I’ll carry around forever, (thanks for writing it) to keep my well worn copy of Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott company.
I don’t know if I can really contribute a favourite book, but I’ll be damned if I don’t get in line for a chance at a few copy of your next one! I think it’s fair to say that I fall somewhere between the two extremes of you and your husband. I wouldn’t go about writing in a book(unless I thought it needed a thorough critique), but dogeared pages and cracked spines are just part of use, and books are meant to be read. Basically, take care of your books but there’s no need to treat them like they’re made of china.
Of course, coloring books are intended to be the exception to the rule, but I still tend to photocopy the images anyway. Plus, then you can color then again later, if you want to!
The Prince of Tides. I wore out several copies, and when I went through a period of time when I was homeless, I stole one from what will remain an undisclosed library – I had nearly nothing to my name and it was a thread of a lifeline to normalcy. It got left behind one time when I had to move quickly, and I cried more for that book than for any of the other material things I lost.
Now I have a copy that lives on the top shelf of my bookcase, and when I need to connect with my life’s constants, I pull it down and read a few pages.
“You get a little moody sometimes but I think that’s because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides
I love the look, feel, smell of books…new & old. I loved book stores & libraries where I would spend hours carefully choosing my next read. Unfortunately, because of health problems I had to switch to a Kindle Fire if I wanted to continue to read books. Which I did. I miss real books and will be buying a select few to carry with me thru thick & thin, those will be your books, Jenny! They will get read the old fashioned way, if it takes me the rest of my life to do so! They will have a special place in my home with the other books I have read dozens of times…such as the Harry Potter series…I have your books on my Kindle, audiobook and will soon have the real books! My best friend pre-ordered You Are Here for me for my 50th birthday so I will have them all, so far😘 So your books will be with me forever! When I can hold & read the real book I will be reading that, if I need something easier to hold and larger print, i’ll switch to my Kindle, and during those times when I just can’t do either…I have your wonderful audiobooks to listen to! Yes, I love real books, but for those days when I can’t use them, I thank my lucky stars that I have my Kindle or I would have missed out on the best books and writings on the planet! THANK YOU JENNY LAWSON!!!
I read in the tub. And the pool. So a lot of my books have water stains. I used to eat a lot while reading but that got to an unhealthy place (thus the reading while submerged became more prevalent) so a lot of my books have crumbs and chocolate stains. I’m also a dog-earer.
So many favorites, too many to list. Fictional characters were my childhood friends, more than most of my real childhood friends. I think I base a lot of my parenting on the moms Madeleine L’Engle wrote.
I LOVE this and it makes me feel so much better about the choice I was just agonizing over about whether to take Furiously Happy with me on my short weekend beach vacay/world escape. And it’s signed by you so I was extra agonizing.
I have a set of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books that is older than I am. I read all of them each at least once a year–and many parts of ones more than that. They are worn looking, but not yet falling apart, like me.
Due to waaay to much work I do mostly audiobooks. They stay unharmed no matter how many times I plough through them. I like the books by Elisabeth Gilbert and Brene Brown. Each great story tellers in their own right…
Duct taped and dogeared! Some books are meant to be devoured. 🙂
I don’t know if I can really contribute a favourite book, but I’ll be damned if I don’t get in line for a chance at a few copy of your next one! I think it’s fair to say that I fall somewhere between the two extremes of you and your husband. I wouldn’t go about writing in a book(unless I thought it needed a thorough critique), but dogeared pages and cracked spines are just part of use, and books are meant to be read. Basically, take care of your books but there’s no need to treat them like they’re made of china.
Of course, coloring books are intended to be the exception to the rule, but I still tend to photocopy the images anyway. Plus, then you can color then again later, if you want to!
I love Patrick Rothfuss’ “The Name of the Wind” and “The Wise Man’s Fear.” Also, his novella; “The Slow Regard of Silent Things,” which puts me in that space where you know everything was made of nothingness, but the nothingness shows through kind of thing. Some guy wrote that to describe being in a Zen state of.mind.
Also, Neil Gaiman’s the OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE.
One of my favorite, and most abused, books is actually series: “The Guardians of the Flame” series by Joel Rosenberg (all 10 books). I’ve read them many times over. I also have a tattered copy of “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien that’s been through a lot. I’d love to win a copy of your new book. 🙂
I’d LOVE a copy of the new book! Maybe it’ll help get me out of this funk and get me to start working on my own stuff again.
My three favorite books, the ones I read every few years, are “The Stand” (the extra long version) by Stephen King, “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Heinlein, and when I simply need some absurdity, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” by Adams.
I think I may finally need a new copy of that last one. My circa 1980 paperback has seen better days. I MAY get one more read out of it before pages start falling out 😉
AND OF COURSE YOUR TWO BOOKS!!! GOES WITHOUT SAYING. BIG CYBER HUGS, SUE
Now We Are Six by AA Milne, RiverWord by Philip Jose Farmer and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern… to name a few.
My favorite story of all time is in the book “The Way of the Wolf”. The story is “Barrington Bunny” my mother used to read it out loud when she was learning to speak English. The book came from a church sale and is actual a religious book of sorts. I’ve had the book since the early eighties, the dust jacket is gone, the cover is best up and the pages are tear stained but it is more valuable to me than anything.
My copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone. I started reading the series when I was Eleven, and very much related to the story of the lonely eleven year old. I’ve had that book nearly twenty years, and read it so many times the spine is broken, and pages are falling out, but I can’t bring myself to replace it because it has been so loved.
Dreams and Shadows by C. Robert Cargill, American Gods by Neil Gaiman, and the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. As someone with some neurological problems, paper books are often my refuge from blue screens
Reading your post, I was immediately reminded of Helene Hanff’s 84 CHARING CROSS ROAD. So great. Love you!
This. This is glorious. #authorgoals
Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. MFK Fisher’s The Gastronomical Me. Robb White’s The Lion’s Paw.
I would love a copy that I could send to my niece in the middle east. They don’t have the colouring books there and she would adore it. She is 12 and struggles with anxiety and self doubt and I want to try help her see that she is perfect just the way she is. Also have you ever thought about compiling some of your blog entries into a book? Kinda like a you’re – not-alone- help book that people can read when they are going through tough times to remind themselves they aren’t alone and cheer them up with funny anecdotes like the shop clerk that may have been snacking on dog treats. My favourite books tend to not be heavy, literary tomes and sometimes it’s embarrassing to say that to people because then they think you are an airhead.
Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley” may always be my favorite, but I also adore Frances Mayes’ “Under the Tuscan Sun,” “Bella Tuscany”, and “A Year in the World.” The worlds blend into pictures in my head, and I am Found in Italy.
Yes please sign me up for a Jenny’s New Book Lottery 😉
WTF? I POSTED A COMMENT ABOUT PATRICK ROTHFUSS AND NEIL GAIMAN AND THEY DIDN’T S STICK. NOW I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH SPOONS TO RETYPE IT! IT’STILL ALL MY HUSBAND’S FAULT! SUE
Oh, and I’d love a copy of your new book ❤️
I read Good Omens at least once a year. It always fills me with glorious delight. It was signed by Terry Pratchett. I just hope that it hasn’t completely fallen apart by the time I find Neil Gaiman somewhere and get him to sign it, too.
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon – cover fell off and pages are falling out so it’s held together by a rubber band. My husband is like Victor, so out of necessity I try harder than I used to so as not to push him over the edge. Thank you more making me feel much less guilty about actually USING my books 🙂
I want one to tack on my wall!!!!!
i can’t stand to mess up my books! i can see where you’re coming from, but i’m just not that way. i love the e-book revolution.
some of my favorite books? that’s a tough one! i guess i’d have to say Siddhartha, White Oleander, and the Dante Valentine trilogy.
i’d love a copy of You Are Here. i’ve been meaning to pre-order it, but i just don’t have the funds rights now!
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, and I’m not just saying that! I adore your soul, and I adore your book. I started reading Furiously Happy, but it got ruined, like really ruined, so I’m found to order another one. My friends and I have a really strange problem. We read your books slowly, like really slowly, because we don’t want them to end!
Oh wait…sorry…It did post! I suck at the Internet! Sti), it would have been my husband’s fault! 😄 Sue
Annie Proulx’s short story collection Heartsongs. I could read them over and over again.
The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, especially Foundation and Empire – the most OMG ending ever. The Narnia series and, while I’m on C.S. Lewis, the Space Trilogy (especially Perelandra). The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula Le Guin (but don’t watch the mini-series – it sucked). The Riddle-Master trilogy by Patricia McKillip (which is FINALLY back in print!!!) The Boxcar Children Mysteries by Gertrude Chandler Warner (which is SOOOO dated but is still a fun read). And last but not least, the Paddington series by Michael Bond et al. I’m 52 and I still have my Paddington bear on my shelf.
Those seem to be in reverse order to the way I read them. Maybe that was intentional.
A few of my favorites: Illusions by Richard Bach, Lamb by Christopher Moore, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, a collection of haiku especially the ones by Kobayashi Issa.
I fall into the in between camp. I don’t like to rip pages, but I will dog ear them and underline or put stars in the margins where there is something important to me. If it is my book I feel totally free to do all the above. Spine breaking….umm maybe no, although I have been known to firmly press it open so it will stay. Interesting post. And I will take your new book apart…just saying. Not sure about a favorite. I still like Andrea Norton books, probably out of print. And I’ve kept a copy of “Chicks in Chainmail” for several moves and will read it again.
I am really abusing books lately, I fractured my shoulder, so I am turning pages with my teeth, my nose etc. Little Women, Old man and the Sea are two of my favs. I thank you for making my crazy depression a bit more bearable by not being alone. Would love your new book as some of my PT is to practice writing.
“…reading those found books is like reading with ghosts, ones who eagerly point out their favorite passages or share their thoughts or questions in the margins.”
YES. So much this. I’m a flea market book buyer. The older, the better!
Books I love so much that they’re a part of me include The Hobbit, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, The Name of the Wind by Pat Rothfuss, and Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. If I was stuck on an island for an indefinite amount of time and could only take those four books with me, I’d be perfectly happy.
ElfQuest (ok, yeah, it’s a comic, but it’s also a series of graphic novels). The Original Quest changed my life, and the series continues to change my life. Unfortunately, most of it is out of print and getting increasingly expensive to acquire second hand, but everything written/drawn before the current story arc started 2 years ago, around 30 fantastic years of truly incredible stories, gloriously lush artwork, and amazing, engaging characters, is available to read on their website (elfquest.com) for free, no strings attached. It’s not the same as having a physical copy to love to death, but it’s the next best thing. And for these, it’s absolutely, positively worth it. Give it a shot; even if that genre isn’t usually your thing, and even if you’re initially put off by the “cute” style (those people must not have made it to the battle scenes… or the orgy) or the “too idealized” shape of the elves (there’s actually a fascinating in-world explanation for that), give it a real chance, because it will reach into your soul. In a good way, not in a Predator-pulling-out-your-spine way, of course. That would just be weird. And kinda hard, since books don’t usually have hands, and most paper cuts are too small to fit a spinal column through.
I suppose I forgot to say favorite books.
The Hobbit (though not the rest of The Lord of the Rings series. I didn’t mind the movies though)
Outlander (series) by Diana Gabaldon
The Heralds of Valdemar series I’ve always enjoyed.
Broken Open by Lauren Dane speaks to me as a widow.
Anne Rice, The Witching Hour. I’ve decimated one copy and am well on my way to destroying the second. Can’t wait to get You Are Here.
I should add “A Prayer For Owen Meany” by John Irving, but it falls into the category of so emotionally powerful that I have been unable to read it again. Does that make any sense at all?
A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door
The Narnia series
But my all time favorite and most recommended as well as the book I have gifted to the most people: Let’s Pretend This Never Happened.
Jenny you have a way with words like none other.
The books I’ve most frequently recommended (besides yours, obviously) are Wonder by RJ Palacio, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and Jane Eyre. Wonder is the first book my child ever recommended to me. I was certain it would crush my heart into a million pieces, but it never did. Please read it, and you’ll always remember to be kinder than is necessary, or try to be anyway. The others have stuck with me for different reasons, and are worth anyone’s while. I love my tech, but am yet to embrace e-readers. Good to know I am not alone!
You know, your description of the careworn books in your life makes me feel as if you’re describing beloved stuffed toys, a la Velveteen Rabbit. Like they’re becoming fully alive, “real”, as you’re wearing them to bits. <3
We lost one of our kitties, Izzy, today. Totally unexpectedly,as she was only 2 years old and not seeming ill. I’m a wreck, because it’s clear when I found her that she did not pass easily and I’m riding the guilt train like a maniac because I slept through it. So having this little heartfelt bright moment from you was very much needed. Thank you.
Now, bear with me and my reasoning…I’m a complete e-book convert because I’m a compulsive reader and when I need a new book, I need it NOW. Plus, I’m really, really lazy. SO lazy that I’m urging my son to develop an app whereby I can blink in a notable way to ‘turn’ my page, so my hands don’t have to move to do so. (But he’s not old enough yet, but I still get on his case about it). Yep. THAT lazy. I ALWAYS eat and drink when I read (somehow I’m not 900lbs despite how much I read) and so I perch my iPad on my lap and read whilst (isn’t whilst a great word? whilst. whilst. it just feels nice in your mouth. wow. dirty.) holding tea or wine in one hand and digging my other hand in a box of crackers or something. So the ‘page turn via blink’ is where I need things to go.
As for my best reads, in no particular order because they simply cannot be ranked: The Flavia De Luce series by Alan Bradley, The Graveyard Book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and Good Omens by Neil Gaiman, Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, Every Secret Thing by Susanna Kearsley, The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne Du Maurier, Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran.
Ack…I hate leaving the list there.
I will also add this, Furiously Happy is the first book to make me cry with laughter and nearly pee myself. And for that, it too, takes a place on my top books list 🙂
I don’t know that I could ever pick a favorite book. I love way too many and favorites change with my mood swings. The books I have read and re-read and will continue to read forever are “Daddy Long Legs” by Jean Webster, Piers Anthony’s Incantations of Immortality series, and Harry Potter.
Please don’t pick me for a copy of the new book. I will be buying this one because you so graciously gifted me Furiously Happy (which made me laugh so hard I peed my pants three times)
I’m on both sides of the condition of books argument. I love used and worn books, there is such beauty in them, but I am also very particular and if someone dog ears a book in good shape I will cut their eyes out. It’s a dichotomy that’s very annoying to live with really, but what it comes down to in the end is that I just LOVE books – old, tattered, perfectly shiny and new, hard or soft cover, …, it doesn’t matter, books, books, and more books. The only thing I really can’t tolerate is missing pages which has happened a few times.
My most worn books: O.R. Melling – The Faerie Chronicles, Hitchhikers Gudie to the Galaxy, Tom Robbins – Jitterbug Perfume, pretty much anything by Neil Gaiman, Robertson Davies or Timothy Findley, and your books for which I am so grateful.
I’ve already ordered your book, but I will still throw my name in as I have a friend I would love to be able to share it with. She doesn’t yet know how much it will mean to her, but I do.
While I have destroyed many a book, I count more the books that I love by the ones that I’ve had to buy OVER AND OVER again, because I can’t contain my excitement and give them away so that others can maybe have the same connection and love for it that I do.
Among the books that I have bought too many times: Emma, Jane Eyre, Redwall, Dragonsinger, Hiroshima, Bonk, The Night Circus, Hans Christen Anderson’s fairy tales… the list goes on 😀
Every few years, I have to read “To Kill A Mockingbird” — and clutch it to my chest when I’m done.
Would love a free book if I win. I have many favorite books. The oldest would be gone with the wind. The newest would be your Let’s pretend this never happened because u write the way my brain works sometimes. But please don’t tell anybody.
my hard back copy of Roots has been taped and glued back together…same story with To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Good Earth…soooo many books, so little time
My favorite books would have to be The Giver, This Star Won’t Go Out, any book by Jeannette Walls and Furiously Happy. Still haven’t read your other book yet, though I did buy it. I am a neat freak with my books and I like them looking fresh off the press. I do have multiple copies of books to loan people of my favorite books, just incase they aren’t so careful. I like to look at old books from garage sales or estate sales. I think the marks inside them tell their own story. Have you heard of altered books?
Your books scream LIFE, I’ve always been on the fence about books being written in, but Furiously Happy pushed me over to the side of loved and tattered books and I’m never going back!!
If you looked at my bookcase you can tell the books that speak to me. They all look like the books in the picture! There are books that look new, I didn’t like those.
My husband is a destroyer of his most loved books, and has been through multiple copies of some. Thank you for helping me to understand. Me, I stick to fingerprints, curled edges, and the occasional bromen spine. I hope you chose me for a copy of your new book. I can’t wait to read it.
F*ck Feelings by Michael I Bennett MD and Sarah Bennett
I love this. I look for books that are underlined or have notation and have imaginary conversations with the previous reader. You can tell I love a book by the chocolate thumbprints or tea spills. I’m also famous for those little flag things you can get at office stores. People still find ones that I’ve left in library books. Some of the books I’ve read till they fall apart are the Drina Ballerina series by Jean Estoril. I wish to the literary gods that they would reprint them. My Jane Austen’s are well loved too. Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder.
I would love a copy of your book.
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, Hind’s Feet On High Places by Hannah Hurnard, , My collections by Jane Austen and The Bronte Sisters, The Bible by God and a few other books at home that I reference almost daily. I already have your next book on pre-order, but I wouldn’t mind getting a free copy. 😉
And yes I would absolutely love one!!!!
I’d love a copy of You Are Here!
I don’t, as a rule, write in books. And a teacher, in elementary school, dedicated class time to teaching us how not to damage a book spine while reading books (she had SHELVES of her personal collection for student use) – it stuck. As a result, my books, although well loved and often read, appear to be fairly well preserved. Nevertheless, some of my absolute favorites haven’t fared as well due to travel or being lent to other people who are not as careful. Coloring books and journal articles (yay academia!) are a completely different story though. Notes, scribbles, doodles, and highlighting abound.
All that being said – I love old books – with their little pieces of history tucked away inside, secrets just waiting to be discovered by someone who isn’t afraid of a disheveled, somewhat unkempt (or possibly musty) outer appearance.
All of my favorite books are in the worst shape. The hobbit series, the Harry Potter series, Poisonwood Bible (by Barbara Kingsolver), and Furiously Happy is getting there. Like someone else said about the Ebooks, (autocorrect says Ebola) they lack character. I like my books messy! I can’t wait for your new book!!!
Stephen king’s “the stand”. I’ve loved two copies to the point of pages falling out. I have the e-book now, which is easier to hold (I have chronic tendinitis). ALL of the Little House books! Michener’s Alaska, Texas, Hawaii, and Colorado. (those are great if you like history, too.)
BUT with paperbacks, I read them very carefully so that the spines don’t break, especially if they’re borrowed, I don’t like messing up other people’s property, you know? but great when a book is loved to death. 😄
I love old books that have been loved…I have a bunch on my shelves that I have read over and over and the smell and nostalgia is amazing. I was in Dublin recently and they have this great bookshop with a bunch of older books that I could have spent hours in (if my husband would have let me). Sadly seems like books are a dying breed because of e-readers. I get the convenience but there is just something about the library and bookstores and that book smell….
@becomingcliche
MM Kaye has a children’s book called The Ordinary Princess (an imperfect princess lives in the forest with her animal friends!!!!!! And some squishy love stuff…) and it is one of my absolute favorites of all time. Your comment has inspired me to look up her other titles (I didn’t want to ruin my loving illusion of her as a children’s author).
I love my ereader for convenience, but I can’t help myself in a bookstore. I try to take good care of my pretty autographed books, but I do keep them in my bag and take them everywhere. I try, but often don’t succeed to keep them looking good. That said, one of my all time favorite books is ‘only love’ by Susan Sallis. It’s a kiddie one and I got it from the library-book-sale, so very pre-loved, but that never bothered me. I still read it whenever I need a good cry. I’d love a copy of your new one!
Oh man – I just found an angstly loved copy of “In Lane Three, Alex Archer” from my teen years when reorganizing my books for a move. My BF was like….why are you keeping that? Ha! Other books include “Tattoos of the Heart” and “Muppet Manners”. Yup – a book on manners by the muppets.
My go-to book has always been The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. If I get too stressed or unhappy, I re-read it, even though I’m almost 30. Another great one is Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman. I’ve given away many of my copies of this book to friends, so my current one always looks pretty good. Lol. I’ve pre-ordered your new book, but I’d love a copy so I could share with a friend…or I could have one to destroy and one to keep pristine so I could make both my inner artist AND my inner perfectionist happy 🙂
My greatest dream is to see that someone loves a book I’ve written the way you love books.
ooo I need to destroy your new book! PICK ME!!!
Picking a favourite book is like picking a favourite child. It is difficult, and I don’t want to play favourites, I love all my books just as hard as you love yours. I consume them with my eyes, hands and heart. I adore the Borrowers, and anything Hans Christian Anderson, and the Sanheim Chronicles by Rob Blackwell, and, and, and agh!! I only have your books on kindle and that makes me sad, they are defintely books for the hands and for keeping!
I love carrying books around to read in lines or when I need to wait. I usually buy 1 book to destroy and the autographed ones neatly tucked away.
I understand your obsession with used, well-loved books. The book “S” by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst was written to appear used; part of the story is in the apparently hand-written margin notes. The author Nick Bantok has also written some great books that include little doodads tucked into the pages; The Forgetting Room is my favorite.
Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Suzanna Keyson’s Girl Intrerupted are my most falling apart copies.
I would love to have your new book and I promise to write and color all over it and tear pages out and do everything it was intended to have done to it.
I love books so much I am learning how to make them. And fix them – aarrgghh that poor Furiously Ripped Up; my eyes, my eyes! I’m very careful with mine – no dog ears or margin notes or food (the humidity here makes mould grow), always use a bookmark but occasionally I’m a bit naughty and lay them down open. And secondhand bookshops are my happy place. But if I lend a book to someone and it comes back in worse condition than it went out – that person is blacklisted for LIFE. And possibly slain multiple times in various ways by my imagination.
I do have many older books too. My absolute favourite when I was ten was Black and Blue Magic by Zilpha Keatley Snyder which I found in the bookshelf at the back of my classroom. Years later I found that same copy, spine-taped and dog-eared and battered, in our local secondhand bookshop. It’s one of my most treasured possessions and the book that kickstarted my love of fantasy.
I have a few paperbacks I bought brand new for 35 or 50 cents. (Civilization began to unravel when they took the “cents”sign off keyboards.) Starman’s Son, The Door Into Summer, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. They’re all looseleaf by now — I’ve read them over and over, and the fifty-year old glue has just disintegrated. I also underline and annotate as I read.
I’ve read The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings a couple dozen times apiece, but I have the deluxe editions, so they’re holding together.
Oh I so love old books! A friend gave me a very elderly copy of Little Women, and it had pressed flowers and four leaf clovers in between the pages!! Wonderful!
Thoroughly loved books are the best!! I do not destroy my books. I love them and make them even better with that love. And I will totally love your new book to pieces!!!!
Love ya Jenny! Thanks for helping me see the light.
My husband and I are the same way. I write in my favorite books, highlighting in different colours for different readings. Some of my favorites are ridiculous because most of it is highlighted or underlined.
Alice Hoffman’s “The Third Angel” and Aryn Kyle’s “Boys and Girls Like You and Me” get repeatedly tucked away from the “share” pile.
A pile of dead trees gives us something that e-readers never will. The words may be the same, but they lack the soul that a book has.
Happy National Book Lover’s Day!!
Some of my favorites include Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With The Wind”. I really enjoy the sequel, “Scarlett” as well, though I’m not as big a fan of the prequel (??) “Rhett Butler’s People”. It’s alright, but I just don’t enjoy the author’s style as much.
And as much as I want to smack her for being a whiny entitled bratty baby, I also tend to lean on Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat Pray Love” when I’m having a bad time.
I’ve also got two of Wil Wheaton’s books and both of Justin Halpern’s books on my Kindle for when I’m having a REALLY bad day and need something to make me laugh my pants off.
The book I reread the most often is Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett because it makes me laugh and makes certain that the reader doesn’t take themselves (or anyone else) too seriously. Other books that I love are Ready Player One (reminds me of my carefree teenage years,) Handmaids Tale (reminds me that things can always get worse,) and Fahrenheit 451 (reminds me of the power and importance of books as well as the dangers of living only through the media social or otherwise.) Books are the most important thing in my life. They are my friends (though I do have several living breathing human (and one feline) friends as well.) They are my comfort. They are my entertainment.
I always feel super guilty about beating up my books, but this makes so much sense, and now I feel better!
I definitely need your new book. I am so excited for it! And I do plan on living it to pieces, as I do with your other books. 🙂
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. The Secret lLife of Bees by Sue Monk. To name of few. All read in three dimension. No e-reading for me
The Chronicles of Narnia. I read them for the first time as a 12 year old and cried when I discovered there were only seven. They all have tattered covers and broken spines. As fate would have it, I married my own Prince Corin (named by his English teacher father and librarian mother for the character in A Horse and His Boy) 13 years later.
I’d love a copy! And, I wouldn’t be who I am today without Carry On, Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton. You and her have changed my life for the bestest! Love ya!
Anna Karenina; Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened; The Catcher in the Rye (even though I have not read it in years); Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
my favorite books in the world are the Prydain Chronicles and Call of the Wild
My books are my treasures I love smelling my books I couldn’t damage them I would be heart broken lol. I guess it’s ok to be strange sometimes(probably I am strange most of the time lol) it makes us unique.
The last book that I read in book form, I did that with, then loaned it to a friend in need. She never returned it. I read on Kindle now, mostly because of the weight of the book and size of the font, but if I truly love a book, you will find a hard copy on my book shelves somewhere. THAT drives my husband crazy, but he loves me, so he lets me 🙂 I do mark up the digital copies though, and will reread them numerous times. I also have audible copies of my favorites so I can have them read to me while I commute to work and back.
I’m always afraid that some one will yell at me for dog earring my pages and cracking the spine. I will definitely be getting your next book.
Thank you for passively curating a complete list of “Books You Must Read” in the comments section. Now, I’m going to print out and carry this list to the library where all the best books live before auditioning each one for future purchase and forever shelving. If anyone else wants the list shoot me an email and I’ll share. Those librarians won’t know what hit ’em!
I have many favorite books, but the one I read to pieces (literally) is “Skinny Legs and All” by Tom Robbins. Granted it’s a paperback, so it fell apart easier than my hardbacks of the complete Sherlock Holmes, The Hitchhikers “trilogy”, the Harry Potter series and The Hobbit.
Away by Jane Urquhart; The Time Travelers Wife; Falling Out of Time by OR Melling
Books are unicorn tears: amazing and capable of so much magic. If you ask me about a period in my life, the first thing that usually comes to mind is a book title. So many beloved stories… (would love the chance at a free book. I already pre-ordered, but I have a friend I’d love to gift one to.)
Would love to get a copy of the new book!!!! I have bought FH read it and gifted it to someone who needed it more than me 3 times now….and I just had a day last week where I wanted to read it again… so I will probably be buying my 4th copy next week. sigh ….. thank you
Mrs. Mike, The Idiot, and The Historian. I love those books. And they’re all completely different.
Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. I’ve read it a million times, and then I lent my copy to someone for their kid’s book report and never saw it again 🙁
I’m a chronic and incurable dog earer (how exactly does one noun that verb of that noun?), and I’m ok with that.
Some of my most loved are my series of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Still have my originals from when I was a kid. I would love your new book (I have your other 2). 😊
If it’s not a first edition, any given book usually slowly becomes its own little part of my history. Sometimes it’s because I’ve used train tickets or receipts from various places as bookmarks, or there’s that faint, unmistakable smell that reminds me of the second hand shop where I found it, tucked away in the middle of a crowded shelf like an archaeological treasure.
Sadly, I’m running out of room for physical books, so I have to turn to my Kindle nite often these days – and that’s filling up!
Oh, and my favorite boss? What are you doing, trying to torture me? How on earth can I possibly be expected to choose?? If
I guess you can’t really do this with a kindle edition…or can you? LOL..
I am in the same boat, love it to death, so to speak! =)
Favorites? One of the first books years ago that really spoke to me was “Running with Scissors”, and pretty much every other memoir by Augusten Burroughs. I’m a sucker for memoirs I general, which is why I love your writing so much too. My “Let’s Pretend this Never Happened” has been read a few times already. =) And Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” is another favorite. =)
Can’t wait for “You Are Here”, the teasers you have shared are amazing! I do a lot of Kindle books just because of convenience, but that is one that will be a hard copy, for sure!
I would love a shot at getting your new book! And I am very interested in getting your old book! 🙂 gwingal
Some of my most loved books is my series of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. I have had them since I was a kid. 😊
Jane Eyre has always been a favorite, my copy is pretty battered, but I will never replace it. It’s my go-to when I need to read, but my brain is too tired or stressed to deal with a new book.
Beowulf.
American Gods.
Blackbird House.
Recent addition: The Night Circus.
My copy of Jane Eyre is in pretty rough shape. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read it and cried over it. “Reader, I married him.” Gah! So good!
And of course my Harry Potters have seen some love. Any future kids I have will have to get new copies.
I get it — my favorite book, “And Ladies of the Club” by Helen Hooven Santmyer has been literally read to pieces by me three times. I’ve had to replace it that many times because I read it over and over again to the point that it broke into pieces, and once that happened, pages would tear out/off. And since I couldn’t live without the missing pages, I would start afresh with a new copy. (I highly recommend the book. Every time I reach the end, I immediately start over, because I miss the characters that have died, and I want to go back and be with them again.) I’m still waiting for the publisher to see reason and put out a Kindle version, so I’ll have it with me wherever I go!
I have a copy of Grapes of Wrath that my mom bought for a college class, before I was born. My mom loved it so much she had my father read it (he’s not much of a novel reader) and he loved it. I found and read her copy at 15. I love that tattered book. I’ve read it 3 or 4 times.
Confederacy of Dunces.
1984.
Catch 22.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and 1Q84
I feel so lucky to have found the books which, in part, helped make me who I am today.
I knew I loved the author Joseph Campbell when I read a quote that his form of meditation was writing in the margins of books. When I was 10 I received a hardback copy of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S.Lewis. It was my Christmas Eve present. I remember staying up late into the early morning hours to read it through completely while the snow fell gently all night. I re-read that countless times. A little girl, staying true to herself and her friends changed the world.
Robert Heinlein’s “Time Enough For Love”; Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451”; “Memoirs of a Geisha”, & many, many more. And I would love a copy of “You Are Here”, if I were lucky enough to be chosen!
Anything in the Disc World Series. We love and miss you Sir Pratchet !
I can dog-ear catalog and magazine pages all day, but I cannot bend book pages. I’m not sure why. 🙂
Favorite books…oh goodness where to start; To Kill A Mockingbird, The Dark Jewels Series by Anne Bishop, Harry Potter Series, and Furiously Happy which took me forever to get a chance to read due to Library wait list and limited funds. But once I read it, omg I read it over and over until I had to return it and just a couple months ago I was able to finally purchase my own copy which has been read twice now and will be read more and more. I love your books, especially this one. You have put into words what I could not about mental illness. It’s my goto on rough days, it’s what I share with my husband to help him maybe see what or why things are happening in my head. I cried the first time I read it cause it was like finally someone gets me and my struggles a d more describes it so other may learn how to embrace another’s disease. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Harry Potter. All of them. I read them over and over. The first one is in particularly horrible shape. They’re my friends, and when they leave Hogwarts for the summer, my heart longs for them and I can’t wait for them to come back.
Also, The 10th Kingdom. It’s was a miniseries in 2000, but it’s also a fantastic book. It’s equally disheveled and will need to be taped up the next time I read it.
I would love a copy of you new book! It would be terribly well loved 🙂
I usually get books from the library and I am so “Victor” about them to be kind to the next patron who reads them. But there are a few keepers that I own and lovingly personalize with notes and highlighters: “You are a Badass” by Jen Sincero, “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron, “Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil” by John Berendt, and “Mutant Message Down Under” by Marlo Morgan. I hope to add “You Are Here” to my fondleable collection!
I want a book!! You have made such an impact on me as a person who takes crazy pills for anxiety, depression, and migraines. I LOVE Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series. I’ve worn out my copies of Pride and Prejudice, Matilda, Crown Duel, and Terry Pratchett’s Witches Abroad and Wyrd Sisters. Thanks for being real and saying what everyone else is already thinking.
I would be honoured to trash one of your new books! I buy those books that say trash me. The ones with the specific task pages, so that I my express my love of them and others within their pages. Also so that I may save my husband the horror of the dog ear and creases as he too can not understand the physical loving of books to that extreme, as he too is a pristine book lover.
Winter of Fire by Sheryl Jordan
Beauty by Robin McKinnley
Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk
And Nancy Drew when I can’t sleep.
The Betsy-Tacy books my mom gave me, Gaudy Night, Robin Mckinley’s Beauty -where the wild things are… books should be loved and messy…
I, too, love books, but I pass them on when I’m finished with them. Therefore, I have none that are battered or marked up from being so well-loved. I remember attending a training class when I was working, and the first thing the instructor told us to do was to bend the workbook and crack the spine. I was mortified! I was taught to never break the spine, dog-ear pages, or, God forbid, mark in them. My father must have been spinning in his grave.
Oh dear, no! I’m with Victor on this one. I love a pristine book that I can look at and admire. I read it with care and when I come back it’s STILL pristine and I can pretend I’m reading it for the first time all over again. I weep for this generation that only appreciates books in e-book format – they have their place, I suppose, but the ability to physically touch a book is not something I’d give up. That said, I’d love copy of your book – it might not get dog-eared (sacre bleu non!) but I’d still be loved!
I have loads of books I re-read. If I had to choose for today though (and it could change tomorrow) my books are The Outsiders and Catcher In The Rye. J’adore!
The Dog Rules (Damn Near Everything) by William J. Thomas is so funny. I’ve read it countless times and I still laugh out loud every time. For a good time read it with Dorothy Barker!
This might be predictable, but my favorites have always been Gone With The Wind and To Kill a Mockinbird. Also, ever since I read Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, that definitely made my top 3 favorite books. If I’m upset, feeling really anxious (always) or especially after I’ve had a panic attack, I love to pick up that book to read. I can open up to any chapter and just start reading and I instantly feel better. Maybe I need to read more funny books, but that was the first one I have read that actually makes me laugh out loud. So much so that I’m embarrassed to read it in public, because of the stares I get haha I have a hard time letting my books get too worn (especially the one signed by you 😊), but I love hearing you say that. Opens my eyes a little bit. Anyway, I would LOVE to get your new book. I can’t wait. It would definitely be one I would let be used up and even tear out the pages! gasp
Nice to see I’m not alone in my Velveteen Rabbit love of books. I can’t pick just one I love, but I do return to the Bronte sisters over and over again.
Your books (both of them – I love them so much and have bought them as gifts for countless peope), The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, A Prayer for Owen Meeny by John Irving, The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger and The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. The Hyperbole and a Half book by Allie Brosh. I would love a copy of your book. I haven’t pre-ordered it yet because I’m hoping someone will get it for me for my birthday.
I love books – I love to read them, write in them, and make them. I love my kindle for when I absolutely have to read a book NOW not wait for it to come in the mail, and for when I’m travelling, but real paper books are best. I have not had a colouring book since I was a child, but your up-coming book is on my must have list. Because.
1) “I Know This Much is True” by Wally Lamb; it was the first time I realized that I was not alone in dealing my father’s paranoid schizophrenia. It was a magical moment and I swear the pages reached out and embraced me in a hug. 2) “A Prayer for Owen Meaney” by John Irving; it is so rich in symbolism and meaning that I carry it around in my heart every day. 3) “Furiously Happy” and “LPTNH” by the adorable Jenny Lawson; both books are the supportive, loving and accepting family that I never had. 4) Any books by Khaled Hosseini; his words echo throughout my very soul. <3
When I was a child we had a huge bookshelf in the basement filled with the Reader’s Digest hardcover books. I never touched them. I didn’t really like to read books until I go high school. Except for comics, of course! The first book I loved was The Hobbit. I love to read now and collect hardcovers from Stephen King! If I read a book and I don’t want to keep it for my collection (I have other books beside the King books) I pass them onto friends to read and they can pass them on to others. That’s what I love about books.
My original copy of Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston recently fell completely apart – after 20+ years of being my companion through various heartbreaks and episodes of seasonal depression. It opened right to my favorite story, Jackson Is Only One of My Dogs. (I stapled those pages back together, along with a couple other stories, to keep.)
I always look for used cookbooks at estate sales. The pages with the most stains are always the best recipes.
I,too, am a Bradbury fan, but my favorite is The Illustrated Man. I first read it in high school and, like Slaughterhouse Five (another fave), it has stuck with me ever since (some 20+ years ago).
I have other beloved books, but those two really stayed with me, for whatever reason, and to this day I read both at least once a year.
c.j. cherryh, madeline l’engle, connie willis, bradbury, pratchett, mckinley, oh gosh lots of books.
some i have kindle of just because i’m starting to lose pages out of the p-book from loving it to death.
yeah, cookbooks. a cookbook that is spotless means you haven’t really used it. my joy of cooking is covered with un-nameable spots, and stuffed with thousands of note cards….
i’m afraid i like to crack open a new book so i can bury my face in it and deeply snuff the binding glue.
Russka by Edward Rutherford and Wild Swans by Jung Chang are two books that are well tattered and loved in my collection, both touched my heart and soul as they opened me up to worlds I knew nothing of before..
My favorite book is the next one I buy.
If you happen to pick me for your new book please gift it to someone who may not be able to afford it. Just paying it forward. 🙂
The Secret Garden by Frances Hudgson Burnett (I had a paperback copy I loved to death and it was replaced by a hardback copy when I was a teen). Letters to a Young Artist helped me figure out how to be a creative person and got me through high school; I repaid it by destroying the spine and writing in it and underlying passages. An Abundance of Katherines was the first John Green book I owned. I carried it in my suitcase through every move I’ve made, every state I’ve lived in. It’s beaten and underlined and written in, but the best bit of additional writing was when I got to ask John Green to sign it and tell him how much it meant to me.
I have already ordered one, or maybe two, I can’t remember, but am so sure I have yet another friend who needs one. Or will have by the time it comes out. I love your books. I love your story. It reminds me of me, where I’ve been, where I sometimes still am. I have shared you with my friends and with my children. I am so grateful for your openness and courage. And for all the times you made me laugh till I was crying💕💕💕
Any and all Terry Pratchett. Gaiman’s the Graveyard Book. As horrible and misogynistic as they are, Time Enough for Love and Number of the Beast by Heinlein. Oryx and Crake by Atwood. The Little House series. Anything by Martha Grimes, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers, PD James…too many. Overall, though, The Phantom Tollbooth has probably had the most influence on me.
Is love one for the pure fact that I have never held a book of yours. Only downloads. You are an amazing light for so many of us who find it hard to find the light switch
Maegan
I love a new book. Especially if it’s one I am excited to read. There is no greater joy than losing yourself in the writers world. When you revisit that world it’s like going home to visit an old friend. Books will never be obsolete.
I’ve read Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler at least five times. It’s my comfort book when I feel like my life is falling apart. It’s terribly sad in a lot of places, but life affirming through out.
My go-to books are all of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Mine are mostly second-hand & well-loved before I bought them with broken spines & dog-eared pages, exclamation marks & underlined sentences. They make me laugh & they make me think about things a little differently. My copies of your books will end up the same way in time. But my favorite type of book to buy are old cookbooks. I’m talking about the ones that are privately published by now defunct churches & social organizations: typed on a manual typewriter, mimeographed, & Xeroxed. I have one published in the 1930s from somewhere on the East Coast & the units of measurements are pinches, teacups, & pecks. It’s such a wonderful piece of history like time-traveling sans the TARDIS.
Bless the Beasts and the Children by Glendon Swarthout!!! About some “emotionally disturbed” children at a camp, trying to save a herd of buffalo from unnecessary slaughter. Little did I know, at the tender age of 11, the substantial impact this book would have on the rest of my life.
I lost my original copy a few years ago when my basement flooded.
Perhaps ” You Are Here” could take its place?
I still have the cover on my book of Furiously Happy, but it is dog eared and totally marked up so that I can go back to passages that I want to learn and be able to repeat your wisdom to other people. Two other books that are totally marked up and post-it markers is Barbara Coloroso’s Kids are Worth It, and Dr. Phil’s Self Matters and Life Code.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. This, I’m sad to say, was the first book of his that I had ever read and when I was done, I cried and I hugged it. I HUGGED THE BOOK. I have no idea why, I just loved it that much.
I have pre-ordered You Are Here, but my husband is the true colorer in our household, so if you pick ME, I think it would be interesting to see the contrast between MY copy and HIS. March! Dammit!
My broken but beloved book is “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott. It’s a Scholastic book fair paperback with pages falling out and a creased cover. I especially love how it smells.
I think maybe Victor is afraid that you will love him the way you love books. He might be afraid that he will get broken spine, ripped pages and stained. Hrmmm, you’re not made of paper, Victor!
On the other hand, my list:
Last Chance to See
Practical Magic
The Dao of Pooh
Hormones from Hell
Hitchhikers GTTG books
Jenny Lawson’s books
The Cat Who.. books
(am I listing too many? I’ll stop)
E
I’m glad you love your books to death! However, I’m a librarian and some people treat library books as if they are their own and return them with torn pages, water damage, and food stains, and that’s just not cool!
Someone brought a copy of one of my paranormal nonfiction books to a ghost hunt at one of the buildings I talk about in the book. The side of the book was bristling with multi-colored Post-It notes. I took a picture of it just so I could revisit that thrill any time I want to. (I wanted to post the picture here, but I can’t see a way to do that. Maybe I’ll turn it into a post on my own blog. Then you guys can all see what I’m talking about. :D)
I am on my fourth or fifth copy of The Princess Bride by William Goldman because I read each one so much it falls apart.
I read anything I can get my hands on, but my favorites are:
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
A Handmaid’s Tale
100 Years of Solitude
The Stranger
The Poisonwood Bible
A book to me is like an old friend that gets more interesting the more you visit it. I am so happy there are some many people who agree!
Many of my choices are echoed here several times over. All of the Laura Ingalls wilder series, too. And the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. All of them. I fall in over and over.
And I Iove to color! I’d so love your book.
Brilliant! We should all be so ‘hard on our books’—well worn, well loved.My art books have paint smudges on them and dog eared.
Anything by Neil Gaiman!!!! Xxxxooo books!! And marginalia. And water spots. And dogeared pages.
I would make like a jumping bean to receive your newest book!
I’d love a copy of your new book to love!
The entire World Book Encyclopedia from the 1950s. Eisenhower was president when the series was new. Yes, it is INSANELY behind the times, but it’s my comfort reading. I still find ossified cracker crumbs in the pages.
Also “To Kill A Mockingbird” and “Pippi Longstocking.” Sure I thought I was Scout and/or Pippi — but I grew up and became Miss Maudie Atkinson with a yard full of flowers and a Yes Kids, You May Play In My Yard philosophy.
I would love a copy of your book!!! I translated your first book into Portuguese a few years ago and since then have become an avid follower of your blog. One of my favorite and read-over and over books is Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott!
It made me cry to know that I am possibly the 378th commenter. Amazing for you, your writing is so wonderful it deserves that, but I am sick of being lost. I just want to get near the front of the line sometimes, in anything, in life. So, maybe you’ll find me, chin up.
I never buy new books, only Goodwill or junk store. Same as you, I love the life in them. I feel like I’ve kind of met the old owner, made a new friend. I go to the library and curse the ones who marked up the book, because it’s not your book, it’s our book – I know that doesn’t make sense. Especially because I renew them over and over again. In fact I just renewed mine on line today and there was one at 30. 50 is the limit. I feel a little guilty, but no enough to take it back.
My favorite’s are Miss Read books. I am admitting it here because you don’t know me. When things get really bad, I pick one up and just hold it and sometimes look at the pictures and always smell it (I wish that was a perfume). I’ve read lots of other books that would make me look a lot smarter here, if I needed to look smarter. But Miss Read’s book are a child’s book and sometimes it’s quite ok to just be one.
It may be a bit cliche, but for me, there are two:
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
I reread them at least once a year, and my favorite copies have notes (sometimes even conflicting each other) in the margins.
I would love to have your new book! I have so many books that are held together with packing tape! Being a librarian…I rescue many books ready for recycling! I can’t read a book (That belongs to me) without a pen and highlighter! Go Jenny! P.S. Your racoons on the scooter are now my monitor wallpaper!
I can’t wait! And – I just sent out another copy of Furiously Happy to a friend who needed it.
Would love a copy! I love your work. Thanks for considering me.
I recently convinced my 9 year old to read the Chronicles of Narnia… And then I bought him his own copy because mine fell apart in his hands! 🙂
Oh and I want your new book!!
Jonathan Livingston Seagull taught me to live unapologetically
I would dearly lover a copy of You are Here!
Books I’ve loved to pieces: Wrinkle In Time & A Swifting Tilting Planet (Madeiliene L’Engle) American Gods (Neil Gaiman), Emily Dickinson’s Poems, several Star Trek novels esp Spock’s World (Diane Duane) & the Pandora Principle (Carolyn
Clowes) Your books I have only in E-form but it still highlight & copy out passages. I’d love a copy of your new book, You Are Here if you have a spare copy. The Bloggess Tribe and your books have given such hope on darkest nights.
💖💕
The Mercy Thompson books kept me company at my mother in laws bedside while the cancer tore her away from us. I read the same chapters over and over, knowing they were a safe warm place where the grief couldn’t reach me. The Harry Dresden books are all old friends, and they come out when life is tougher than I am. And the first Harry Potter book is the one I turn to when nothing else is strong enough to pull me into a happier, more magical place. 🙂 I think everyone should have a book for a best friend.
my favorite books includes your book, “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened” and Mindy Kahling’s books. I really enjoy a book that has comedy!!
Oh, oh! I’d absolutely LOVE to have a copy of “You are Here”…I haven’t get figured out how I’m going to convince my husband why I NEED yet another coloring book (even though your book is more than that…my track record of completion is spotty at best)
I understand what you are saying but still I cringe at the sight of that book. But… I think that speaks about a problem with me more than everything. I overly cherish every book I have and have to bite my tongue when my daughter loves a book a bit roughly. I don’t want to dampen her enthusiasm.
I can’t even Wreck Your Journal correctly because I wanted every page to be a piece of destructive art. Meanwhile my daughter is laughing as she drags her journal along with a string–she’s completed far more of it than me…and I have the box set. I have small stack of coloring books that I’m too afraid to damage with my mistakes (because of course anything I do will be a mistake -.-)
But I wasn’t always this way. I struggle when people as what my favorite books are. I love so many books for so many reasons dependent on my mood or occasion…but today only one book comes to mind. “Ella Enchanted” by Gail Carson Levine. It’s a wonderful story but it was really physically important to me. I didn’t have many things but of them I loved the book enough to read and re-read the most until the pages were falling out and it suffered through many scotch-tape surgeries to the bindings. I dragged that book through move after move, even when I lost everything, I kept that and a few other books from my childhood with me. Now it sits, battered and yellowed, on my daughter’s bookshelf. You can barely read the spine through all the tape and it absolutely looks terrible compared to all the shiney new books she has.
But it gets me right in the heart whenever I see it. I have a lot to think about today…maybe I won’t be as critical about keeping books in perfect condition. I want to see that as character…and maybe that’ll let me move forward and allow myself to make some mistakes.
The book that has moved me the most deeply was The Bellarosa Connection by Saul Bellow. It is a meditation on the nature of memory that gave me insight into myself. I love and reread Pride and Prejudice regularly. It is both witty and timelessly true. Favorite authors include Donald Westlake, Anne Tyler, (Ladder of the Years), Joanna Trollope, Lee Smith, almost anything by Alexander McCall Smith. I have read The Great Gatsby repeatedly, trying to make sense of it,until I figured out my English 110 professor, a PhD student from Russia, had the wrong end of the stick completely.
And now Jenny, I am a fan of your writing, and would love a copy of your latest book if Canadians are eligible.
Picking a favourite book is like picking a favourite child. I can’t do it, and we don’t have enough room or time for me to even list a small portion of them. I will say that I grew up reading books like the Narnia series, Tintin’s adventures, Asterix & Obelisk, Rupert the Bear, and every comic book that I could get my hands on. I still love to read, evidenced by my overflowing bookshelves, and my computer and laptop overflowing with electronic books. I am one of those people who loves to read, but I will cry at the sound of a book spine cracking!
I have an old dog-eared paperback copy of William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways that has at least three colors of ink, plus pencil, marking the passages and quotations I love the most. Think I’ll go read it again.
Someone borrowed a paperback from me once and left it in the rain by mistake and it ballooned out like an accordion. Couldn’t even close the cover.
When I was a kid, I started a book club with a neighbor kid. We sat at a card table in my bedroom and ripped pages out of books to make our own book. That was the club. One day my mother walked in and saw us gleefully ripping apart books. That was the end of the club.
Anne Lamott!
Everything Charles Bukowski has ever written.
The Way of Men by Jack Donovan.
The Strenuous Life by Teddy Roosevelt.
The Rational Male by Rollo Tomassi.
All authors and books that are unapologetically masculine.
My copy of The Chrysalids ( which may or may not have been lifted from my high school library over 30 years ago) is in glorious tattered shape. I usually read it once a year. I also named my first cat Sophie even though she had the standard amount of toes.
When I am sad and need cheering up, I re-read Wodehouse’s Leave it to Psmith or the script for Noises Off or I spend some time with Rex Stout’s Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe.
My mom Grimaces when I read a book, she used to be a librarian.. One of the people that repairs the damage we Readers do.. LOL> First thing I do to a paper book is crack it’s spine just a little.. so much easier to read when it lies properly.. and yep, given enough time my favorite books are dog eared and worn. Still ” I” Get upset if it’s not me doing the damage.. LOL. My husband has washed some of my books in coffee and other mishaps that have caused a bit of friction here and there..
The day I can name just one favorite book is the day you know I’ve been replaced by shape-changing space aliens. But just based upon wear- Good Omens, which is very old and ended up in the bath once, thanks to a cat.
Besides your wonderful books, some of my favorites are ANY book by Neil Gaiman, Longmire series by Craig Johnson, Fables by Bill Willingham, Sandman by Neil Gaiman, John Sandford books, teacher books about strategies and other stuff, Ray Bradbury books, H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and the list goes on and on and on……I’ll read anything that interests me!
I also drive my husband crazy by turning down the corners of pages that have things I want to reread!
I am a person of many words, but in this case I’ll keep it simple… WANT.
Books are incredibly sensitive. That they’re in perfect conditions indicates that they a) have scarcely or never been thoroughly perused, or b) that any and all readers likely used incredible care and trepidation in reading them, which signifies that the reading experience was not nearly as enjoyable as it could have been!
I totally want one 🙂
And my all time favorite book is The Little Prince by Antoine the St Exupery. I have multipe copies in 3 langages. All well read and loved. Even made a matching bookmark with pic of boa eating elephant on one side and hat with real four leaf clover on other 🙂
My copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was my fave of the series for YEARS. I’m doing a full read through and it turns out there’s some mystery stain (looks like coffee) plaguing the last several chapters. Guess I REALLY put this book through its paces. Such fantastic writing + characters + all kinds of heart = fave for life
Neil Gaiman talk frequently about signings he and Terry Pratchett did of Good Omens. Almost all to the books were held together with tape, and had been dropped in the bath 3 or 4 times. Someone once brought just the pages in a bag to be signed because they were no longer held together by anything.
The only peopole who apologize were those with nice copies, who usually complained that they’d loaned there’s out and not gotten it back.
Each Little Bird That Sings is my go-to when I need a good cry. I’m an elementary librarian so I read tons of kids’ book so I can recommend them. I have such a hard time “weeding” my trashed/well loved books. I’d love to give them a Viking funeral, but am afraid I’d be accused of “burning books” so I just recycle those I can’t tape anymore.
My new loves are Brandon Stanton books. While working at an inpatient psych hospital, I brought in his Stories book for several patients. Patients are stuck looking at the same 4 walls for 12 hours a day for 3, 5, or 7+ days, so I know the days could get long. I wanted to show them LIFE and others who have had similar experiences so they might not feel so alone. By showing them LIFE, I also hope it would give them HOPE.
Many of my early, best loved books were only available in paperback. I still have two copies of ‘Earth Abides’ held together by tape and so fragile that pages try to fall out when you open them.
Like randomly randomly? Or is there comment types guaranteed to get one a free book? Like professing undying adoration or promising not to stalk you? Spill the beans, woman!
I love books! It would be terrific to receive a copy of your latest book!
So I haven’t had a chance to buy furiously happy only because I was promised it for a birthday coming up. I have listened to the audio book probably five times in the last six months. I have been having one of those fun times with my anxiety and depression and every time I listen to you read the book it helps. ALOT!!!!! I just wanted to say thank you for being honest and sharing your struggles and amazing outlooks on life. Yes victor I said AMAZING! You are helping me and so many other people. My beat up book is tricksters choice.
I bought a leather bound collection of Robert Burns poetry in a used book shop years ago. When I read through it I found, between the pages, several beautifully printed invitations to dances at the town hall of a small town in Scotland and a lock of red hair in an envelope. I left them in the book for as long as I owned it and passed it on like that.
I love writing in books, just to create layers of ideas to go back to. Books are made to be read and loved and interacted with.
That being said, I’d love a copy of your new book!
I don’t normally do this kind of stuff–I feel like most people need this more than me.
Yes I suffer from anxiety and depression but most days I can get up and perform my duties. And I’ve found an amazing man (reminds me of Victor–you all were my inspiration when I was single) who understands. And, I would bet, that you don’t have the time to respond, or even read, all of the posts you get on these posts.
But this is important. And I hope to some day be able to pay it forward. I love to color–it’s definitely therapeutic for me, and you, Jenny have been so important, reminding me that both depression and anxiety lie like motherfuckers. Today is a bad day– tomorrow there will be light again, I know. But today is shitty.
I’m grateful for your presence in my life regardless.
I have some very loved books but lately I’ve been going the ebook route but still buy physical copies of my favorite! I also love your books not only in print but your audiobooks make my work day simultaneously amazing for me and slightly awkward and uncomfortable for coworkers who are close enough to hear….I don’t care though lol
Hmm, I can’t choose just one (because that would violate some weird rule I have), but I do love to read and reread Eight Cousins and Little Women (Louisa May Alcott), Emily of New Moon (L M Montgomery), Harry Potter, Julie Garwood and Nora Roberts (the older classic ones), The Little Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings, and the Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes…
Cannot wait to get out my markers and have a go at your next book!
I really dont understand keeping the comics mummified. My husband does the same!
I hate to admit it but I listened to Furiously Happy on Audio Books. I loved it so much that I bought a hard copy so that I can read a chapter from time to time and also dog-ear my favourite pages. Heck – I might even highlight something!!
Looking forward to your new book Jenny.
A couple of my favourite books of all time are “A Prayer for Owen Meany” by John Irving and “The Power of One” by Bryce Courtenay. Another one that I really loved (although less well known) is “When God was a Rabbit” by Sarah Winman
I have books in baggies. Not to keep them safe from destruction, but because they are now in single pages and I have to keep them in order.
I hate to admit it but I listened to Furiously Happy on Audio Books. I loved it so much that I bought a hard copy so that I can read a chapter from time to time and also dog-ear my favourite pages. Heck – I might even highlight a passage or two!!
Looking forward to your new book Jenny!
A couple of my favourite books of all time are “A Prayer for Owen Meany” by John Irving and “The Power of One” by Bryce Courtenay. Another one that I really loved (although less well known) is “When God was a Rabbit” by Sarah Winman
Cheers!
Ishmael. Man’s Search for Meaning. The Prophet. Leo the Lop.
I tend to be super careful with my books, apart from enjoying the initial delicious sound of cracking the spine. I appreciate when someone loans me a tattered and mangled copy, and I’ve often wished for the strength to be more comfortable with my own books. I just can’t do it! I suppose that for me, the best indicator that I truly love a book is that I don’t own anymore because I passed it along to someone else.
I would adore a copy of You Are Here! Adult coloring books are a staple at my job, both for the staff and for our teenage clients.
I have a collection of books that were my mothers from her teens. They are battered and held together oddly, there is smudges and dog ears and stains. I love them. I collect pre loved copies of Little Women, so far I have 12. All odd and loved up. Each time I want to read them I find a different book to get another view of my fave characters. Why did they love them and why did they hate that part. Its fascinating and unique to each person.
Love the old books. The smell is comforting and reminds me of all the good things in life.
When I was nine or ten, I saved my allowance and bought myself a the seven-book box paperback set of “The Chronicles of Narnia” – I think it cost all of $11.95. I read those over and over and over again… until the pages were falling out and all the spines were cracked and I had to keep them together with rubber bands. Finally bought a new set… but it was SO hard to part with that old one!
Also did the same with my first set of “The Lord of the Rings,” which was a Christmas present from my aunt.
And “The Changeling,” by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, which was formative for me in oh, so many ways….
Princess Bride is one of my favorites….and you can definitely tell by looking at it!!
I like my Kindle for travelling,but I never touch it when I am home. Like someone else said…..it has no soul. It is cold and impersonal. Books are like best friends…they are alive to me!
Your new book excites me so much!
Omigod! I also LOVE Ray Bradbury’s From The Dust Returned!!! He is such an amazing writer. I also love his Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes and the short story: Somewhere a Band is Playing.
So far the one book I truly cried when I finished was The Book Thief. The movie was close, but they had to take out some good parts.
Princess Bride is one of my favorites….and you can definitely tell by looking at it!!
I like my Kindle for travelling,but I never touch it when I am home. Like someone else said…..it has no soul. It is cold and impersonal. Books are like best friends…they are alive to me!
Your new book excites me so much!
I have a few books like this. I have always felt slightly mortified when tears and such happen, but they are indeed badges of being well loved. I would dearly love a copy of your new book!
You inspire and amaze me. I often recommend your books to my clients (I’m a therapist) and show them they are not alone. Thank you for sharing your dark so others may see their own light.
I’ve re-read Harry Potter quite a few times, though I’m more along Victor’s line of thinking. I keep my books pretty neat. (Though I’d be pretty flattered to sign a book of mine that looked as it had been as well-read as the one in your photo!)
My favorite part about the Harry Potter books is that as I get older, different parts stick out to me. I just started going through it again recently, and it’s been quite a few years since my last read-through. One part in the “Goblet of Fire” really jumped out at me this time, as I work in a profession where it’s not too uncommon to get complaints from members of the public who think I should be doing something differently or that I’m not doing enough, even though I practically kill myself doing my best.
The quote was from Dumbledore and said: “If you are holding out for universal popularity, I’m afraid you’re going to be in this cabin for a very long time. … Not a week has passed since I became headmaster of this school when I haven’t had at least one owl complaining about the way I run it. But what should I do? Barricade myself in my study and refuse to talk to anybody?”
It made me feel better about my own job. lol.
Anyway, very much looking forward to your book!
I treat my books the same way. I have an ereader, but maybe this is why it’s still not my favorite way to read. It’s not that I need the words to be printed on paper, but a book feels more like a friend once it feels familiar. And a little ( or a lot) of wear and tear is the best way to make it familiar.
Of course I want a copy! <3 Here’s three of my favorites: A Wrinkle In Time, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal. 😉
I love reading here.
It’s a little like coming home.
I love reading here.
It’s a little like coming home.
ALL Y’ALL a book to read is “The Cracker Factory” by Joyce Rebeta-Burdett. It’s about a smart, wise-cracking woman who snaps but good and goes to a mental hospital where exploits ensue and noodle soup flies. It is like a stew with just the right amount of serious and funny and chocolate BECAUSE CHOCOLATE GOES WITH ANYTHING. Anyway full disclosure I “Victoread your books so I can return them to the bookstore cause I can’t afford them BUT one day when I am moneyed and less crazy from whatever mental illness I have I will own them all. Rock on etc.!
*ghost reading a book. I like how it has the word “victory” in it because when you’re done the book you might look at the pristine still new copy and shriek “It’s a Victoread!”
Or whatever.
Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein, Watership Down by Richard Adams, American Gods by Neil Gaiman, and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Throw in some Spider-man comics over the years and that’s just the top of the mountain of books that I have loved.
I have a half dozen music books here with more sticky notes than pages. I’m afraid to read my paperback copies of the few paperback books I’ve kept because I’m pretty sure I’ll lose some of the pages (Yesterday’s Children by David Gerrold, The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, and Who’s That Lady In The President’s Bed by B. K. Ripley). My hardcover copies of The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein and The Mists Of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley would have poor Victor fainting.
I don’t really have a problem with Kindles… for some of the books that went to the great library in the recycling heap, it’s the only way I can get to read some of those books again. And for new books? Well, if I LOVE LOVE LOVE it, I have a physical copy and an electronic copy. (There are only four authors in that category at the moment… you, John Scalzi, David Gerrold, and Taiji Master Ting Kuo-Piao.)
I admit that I am one of those anal people who like need tidy books without broken spines or dog eared corners. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love my books. (It often means I spend more money because I have to replace the well-read copies!).
I’m so far behind on reading…there was a time when reading was luxury not afforded to me having to work two jobs, school…now I”m sick and I’m slowing catching up. I feel guilty reading, so I do it when I’m alone. I just read this book and it left me wanting to know more, it made me laugh, made me cry.
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Amy+f+quincy
I just started following you on twitter, and think that I need to find your books sooner than later, so I can start loving on them. (That sounded better in my head.)
I teared up at your post. I feel the exact same way! My friend (who I haven’t seen in 10 years) brought me an old hardback of Alice in Wonderland from a garage sale … Pretty sure there were smashed candies in each page and the spine was shot. I also have my grandfathers Little Rascals books from the ’40’s. I love them and their hands on character!
Why am I so bad at social media?!? I had a really nice post about old books and stuff and I got done error about my doppelgänger posting the same crap. I give up. I’ll just hit the heart button to show my love in the future.
I want to be able to write in books, but it does not come naturally to me – I’m too over-thinky and afraid of changing my mind, and too secretive to risk revealing myself to the judgement of future readers of my marked up book. But I want to be like the wanton mark makers! I will try…
This is why I have to have several copies of my favourite books! That way when one gets worn and has be held together with an elastic, I have a backup.
I’m with Victor on this one. Number one: I’m slightly (?) OCD. Number two: I work in a library, and it drives me CRAZY how people treat our books. When I’m finished reading a book, it generally looks like no one has touched it. I was so looking forward to your new book, and thought I would try adult colouring books in anticipation. Bad idea! I am too much of a perfectionist to be the least bit happy with what I’ve done. So I will buy your book for sure, but will absolutely not be colouring in it. I am a prolific reader, but live in a small apartment, so I don’t buy books, I just borrow from the library (where I conveniently work!). A few of my favourite authors are Stephen King, Christopher Moore, Dennis Lehane, and it goes without saying, you.
Don’t laugh but, I loved the Twilight saga. Especially the first book. I think it says something about the kind of person I really am. Also, any of Stephen Kings earlier works. I’ve re-read them and watched the movies over and over, disappointing as they were. I can’t seem to stop myself.
My all time favorite books (the ones I go back to over and over again because they are so good and so comfortable and so uncomfortable at the same time) include Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Lamb by Christopher Moore, Stiff by Mary Roach, absolutely anything written by Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett, The Oracle Glass by Judith Merkle Riley, and all books by Diana Wynne Jones (with the Dark Lord of Derkholm making me giggle often enough that I am no longer allowed to read it in bed when my husband is trying to sleep). Moving overseas meant I had to make the decision to sell furniture to have enough space to ship the books. My son caught the same bug from me. My husband and daughter didn’t.
I’m right there with you. I do not often buy a book new, because I prefer them pre-loved. I love written in ones. I love very old ones. I love my books, and, if I haven’t anything (and I mean ANYTHING) to use as a bookmark (including another book..lol), I’ll dog ear pages. I’ve worn pages clean out of a favorite book, before. I do have some books, I have to have so much, I buy them new, and reduce them to frailty over time, but a book that is so new, it doesn’t want to open, is a book undiscovered.. a book unloved, needing someone to wear it out.
I very much, look forward to wearing out the binding in your next book, too. I haven’t ordered it yet, but definitely want one!
Favorite books:. The Night Circus and Wuthering Heights.
Everyone told me when I got my first Kindle that I’d never go back to books but I could never own just a Kindle version of a book I love. I alternate between both but there is no love with the Kindle.
My favourite book is illusions by Richard Bach. I’ve never kept a copy long enough for it to get worn because I always end up giving it away…
I’d love a copy of your new book to add to my collection.
I love this. It’s like the Velveteen rabbit.
Books I read over and over are The Stand, Stephen King, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Illunions by Richard Bach, Me talk pretty one day by David Sedaris, Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Not to be a kiss ass but I’ve worn out my audio copies of both your books and had to copy them to my phone to enjoy when I’m out. I also have both physical copies of your books and your coloring book on pre-order. My other well loved & abused books are: Watchers by Dean Koontz, Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein, & The Darkest Evening of the Year by Dean Koontz. Racing in the Rain was given to me by my best friend a couple months before she died from a botched surgery. It took me a year to be able to read it. It makes me cry every time but the lesson rings true, sometimes you have to embrace a thing , rather than fear it, to come out whole on the other side. My books are all spineless and curling, I dare not borrow from the library because I like to drag my books around everywhere and they look like they have survived a tornado!
This is me leaving a comment as a subtle request for a free book because I’m a poor college student and would give my left shoe in exchange for a free copy of your new book, but… in hindsight, I’d deeply regret giving away my left shoe because then the entire pair of shoes would be useless because who wears just one shoe? I might as well give a pair of shoes in exchange for a copy of your book… but that seems a little extreme and possibly stalker-ish… but it would help with my case on being a poor college student–so poor that I don’t even have shoes anymore.
Except for these carefully constructed shoes I just made out of books that Jenny Lawson told me I should use.
My copies of “American Gods”, “Charlotte’s Web”, and “Jurassic Park” are all held together with packing tape and prayer.
(Also if you wanted to include me in the drawing, that’d be swell)
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore, and Fool by the same author. And the Harry Potter series. And I have audiobook versions too for airplane rides (I hate flying, but for different reasons than you).
(If you randomly select my comment, please consider leaving a copy of your book somewhere for someone to unexpectedly come across and enjoy).
The Stand – Stephen King. Currently on 3rd copy. I read the first two so many times they fell apart.
I am beyond excited to get the new book! Love your arkwork & how it resonates!
Omg this is so true! Especially for cookbooks too. My fav cookbooks are covered in chocolate smears, crumbs, etc. I’ve had to duck tape the spines of several fiction books!
This is SO ME! First off, all my books are waterlogged. I like to read with no interruptions at all, so 95.84% of the trading I do is in the bathtub. Second, most of my books wind up highlighted and dog-eared at the very minimum and my absolute favorites have notes in the columns referencing other books or quotes I’m reminded of in addition to asterisks by author book, movie, and music recommendations. Sometimes I’ll almost start journaling if there’s room! I love author’s who leave half pages at the end of their chapters for this purpose… Hint, hint!
My most beloved book is Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. I have 3 copies I have digested at different times during my life and I love looking back at what moved me to tears at age 14 compared to what I related to when I was pushing 40. An entire lifetime of insight captured in doodles in one of my faves.
“Mote in God’s Eye” By Niven & Pournelle. It was amazing as a teen to read it and read about aliens in a different way. Plus the worlds that are created, and the dialogue. I love that book.
Free copy please!!
Books are my lifeline. These books are who I am: https://psychobabblepants.wordpress.com/2015/11/16/my-six-books/
You MONSTER! Victor- gather all your books and RUN!
I love my books to a-very-well-looked-after-in-life death. If I do mark up pages, it’s with pencil so that I can erase them if I ever choose to. Or I make lists on paper bits of passages and page numbers and tuck them in the books. (no shock I have OCD) I’ve read many books over and over. Just gently. My husband borrowed my copy of Shadow Moon by Chris Claremont and George Lucas and broke the spine. I nearly divorced him.
Much (gently) loved books include: Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion and The English Patient; and Mark Helprin’s Winter Tale (way before the movie ever came out).
I would love your new book
90 minutes by Jodie piccult
I have a hard copy of your book but I abuse the audio book version. I listen to it constantly and skip to my favorite parts. I fall asleep to it. I listen to it when I feel down to remind myself I’m not alone. If I did the same to the hardback it would literally fall apart. I’m the type that keeps books pristine so I can’t bring myself to write in it but honestly if I could I would tattoo the quote “the whole world could be cured with enough antipsychotics and cake” across every section of my body
I guess I’m kind of like Victor, I can’t bear to write in a book (except textbooks — I used way too many yellow highlighters on those). That being said, I do tend to treat my books like filing cabinets. Since I’m always lugging one around, I stick things in it that I don’t want to forget; to do lists, things to mail, shopping lists/coupons, etc. Sometimes I can’t even tell which one is my bookmark.
I totally related to the estate sale book thing and reading all the comments written in them. My aunt would constantly clip articles from their hometown paper and send piles of them to my mom so she would know what’s going on back home. Each one had comments in the margins, or underlined passages or a “ha” for something she found funny. As she aged, the handwriting got shakier, which is how we knew something was up health wise. She’s now 90 and in the throes of dementia, so the clippings have stopped. God how I miss them.
My copy of Catch22 has to be kept in a Baggie to keep the pages together. It brings me so much joy to hold it in my hands, laugh, and cry. The words in the margin are my own and it makes me so happy. I can’t wait to get my hands on your next book, pages Meant to be torn out, put into a wallet, and carries around for comfort.
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. I take it everwhere. It has been soaked in a rainstorm, spine broken, entire pages underlined and flowers pressed into it. I bought a hardcover to loan out because everyone needs to read it but I can’t part with my copy. The first three books of Anne McCaffreys Pern series. And Emily of New Moon by LM Montgomery. I love so many books but those are the ones I’ve reread over and over and over and cannot live without.
Blaze Wyndham by Bertrice Small, Touchstone Series by Andrea K Host, Harry Potter, The Program by Suzanne Young, 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher.
I’m eagerly anticipating your next book! My husband laughed when I told him I had already preordered it.
I would love one!
I’ll give. I love books. Though I digress, I have your Furiously Happy on Audio it makes me smile and giggle and say, “yes” when I drive to work. My recent fave books are the Outlander series, oh my! My childhood fave book was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I believe that was read more than 5x+ ove the years and well worn to say the least.
I’d love one!!!
Catch 22 (although you wouldn’t know it as I have the kindle version), Needful Things, which was so well loved, my first copy is no longer with me. I replaced it with the hardback version, so hopefully that lasts longer, and My Darling, My Hamburger, which I believe is only held together by my hopes and dreams.
My husband also calls me a monster in reference to books. He doesn’t understand how someone can love them as much as I do and treat them the way that I do. I think that my love leaves marks behind, but only good marks, the kind that really count.
I have a hard time choosing favorite books (like having favorite children).
I buy adult fiction for a library district. It’s the best job I’ve ever had.
new favorite–A Robot in the Garden –it’s not science fiction, but a sweet redemption story
old favorites–
Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle
Door Into Summer by Robert Heinlein
One for the Money by Janet Evanovich
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Vanishing Cornwall by Daphne du Maurier
Tara Road by Maeve Binchy (and pretty much everything she wrote)
Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
Trust Me on This by Donald Westlake
Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie
It Had to Be You Susan Elizabeth Phillips
The Wives of Bowie Stone by Maggie Osborne
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
The Green Mile and 11/22/63 by Stephen King
Books my mom sent me that had one- or two-word reviews on the inside cover.
The Secret Garden as a kid. As an adult, I read it out loud to my daughter, doing all the voices and accents numerous times.
Robert A Heinlein. Any, all… esp Number of the Beast, Friday, Job, Beyond This Horizon, Glory Road…everything Future History… i have multiple copies of a few, having loved them to tatters.
I would love a copy of your new book. 😀 If I don’t win it, I’ll buy it. But free is my favorite price!
I love your books. They have helped me through hard times. Thank you for being so open and honest. I would love a copy off You are Here.
Ahh! Stray click submitted too soon!
Also, the whole Wrinkle series by Madeline L’Engle, 13 Clocks by Thurber, the whole set of Roald Dahl, Gaiman’s Sandman series, Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality, Barker’s Imagica…
I feel about rescued (used) books the way some people feel about rescue pets. And reading them is exactly like you describe; you are in a sacred secret club, discovering the joys and profound moments someone else had with a book.
Who can have a favorite book? I can think of books I love- or loved in the minute -Secret Garden or that have brilliant things to say or say things brilliantly The Great Gatsby, To kill a Mockingbird, half of Hemingway. The books by that Japanese writer that writes in a different language first to get the odd unbalanced feel. Any book that makes me laugh or cry. Dostoevsky.John Nichols. I don’t know – there are so many that made me feel.
And I get very precious with books – probably from working in a library. But I love the older books that have thin delicate pages that you can’t bear to tear because they’re so lovely and so filled with life. Those books I’d hold on to forever, taking off my shelf to smell them and touch them but I wouldn’t read them. I’d get my copy – a good hard backed, workingman’s copy that stands up to rough hard handed greedy eyed readers and I’d read it again and again.
Not to sound like a siuck up but your first book is my go to book. I have given 5 copies as gifts and have 2 myself as well as one on my nook. Whenever I need a pick me up I grab my book or open my nook app on my phone and pick a chapter to read!
I also love Wally Lambs Shes Come Undone and This much I know is true.
Also have a first edition of The Littlest Witch a book I loved as a child.
I have already preordered mine, but put me in the drawing anyway. I would give it to my daughter Leah. She loves to color and draw (especially on herself) She’s going to be 14 in a few days and feels broken already even though she is a sweet girl with biggest heart. I guess the biggest hearts break the easiest…
I can’t wait to get my hands on your new book! I love it, it gives me such ideas! Both of your books were my best Christmas present this past year. I’m going to go buy them again! (because lightning struck the house in the room where they were at; haven’t seen the damage yet, but pretty sure it’s the wrong kind of hot reading material, lol). Another book on my well loved list is The Night Circus. 🙂
“Matilda” by Roald Dahl, the “Harry Potter” series by J.K. Rowling, the “Knitting in the City” series by Penny Reid, and “Smoke and Mirrors” by Neil Gaiman.
I would so love your new book. I absolutely adored the last 2. I call myself a Jenny Lawson pimp because I tell EVERYONE to read your books. I even got my dad to read them.
I’m so excited for your new book. I wouldn’t mind getting a free copy.
Some of my favorite books are Ella Minnow Pea, any of the Wicked Witches of the Midwest by Amanda M. Lee, Must Love Otters and The Coincidence of Coconut Cake. I love to read books that pick me up and make me fall in love with the characters, most of the time. Sometimes life is so stressful, getting lost in a book whether it’s a memoir or just fiction is right where I want to be. It drives everyone around me crazy, but books are my go to happy place.
I love my books to death. Most loved may be The Hobbit. My copy is in tatters – spine completely gone, split down the middle rendering two distinct coverless books held together by rubber bands (it was the first book I finished on my own after being told I was too lysdexic to read, and reading it – albeit slowly – became one of my favorite tiny acts of rebellion).
The Once and Future King by T H White is up there too, as is Pat Rothfuss’ The Name of The Wind. I love the worlds and the characters they create.
Anything where the writer talks to me like a friend. That’s why I love your work and look forward to the next one!
count me in as another book wrecker. Like you I never go anywhere without a book in my bag and that means they get a bit tatty, and I dog ear the pages too cos I’m always losing bookmarks but a dog ear doesn’t fall out of the book so I always know where I was up to. As a librarian I feel a little guilty about it but then I console myself with the thought of what libraries do to books and don’t feel so bad. (In case you’re wondering, we destroy them when we weed them from the collection or otherwise some well-meaning soul will “rescue” them from the garbage dump and bring them back to us)
So many… Harriet the Spy, A Fine and Private Place, all of The Bagthorpe Saga, Sex Tips for Girls, Catcher in the Rye, Home Cooking, the Mrs. Pollifax books.
Me. Me. Me. Me. Please.
I try to use bookmarks with most books, so I can donate them to others who cannot afford them after I’m done. But there are some I will keep forever, and those are much-used. My absolute favorites are Illusions and One, both by Richard Bach. I love seeing so many books I have enjoyed on other people’s lists here. Somehow it validates me.
The way you described your interaction with the books you love is just amazing. I like to add notes on the side and highlight the passages I like..sometimes comments when I am agreeing or disagreeing with the writer…As other people here have mentioned, Kindles do not give you this luxury of interacting and sharing love with your books.
Sometimes I think I am a culmination of bits and pieces of the books I have cherished over the years. Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, Cherry Ames all gave me the courage to explore independence rather than early marriage, and Erma Bombeck gave me the gift of laughter during the never ending routine of washing and folding the same clothes week after week, as I raised my children. I am eagerly awaiting your next book to add to my bits and pieces. You have given me permission to be vulnerable,wickedly funny, and lovable dispite being a bit….unique. Thanks for adding the spice to my nice bits.
I love my books to death, but I have to say I do tend to keep them neat and tidy. You can tell which books I love best because they have – shock, HORROR – creases in the spine. I long ago perfected the art of reading books without creasing the spine AT ALL. The only books I own with creases are the ones I have read addictively. These ones are as battered and bruised as they come 🙂 So… the books that are falling apart on me:
Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy (and to a slightly lesser extent the rest of her Rain Wild Chronicles books)
Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle
Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Neverwhere
Kelley Armstrong’s Bitten and Stolen (plus the rest of the Women of the Otherworld series)
C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia
and last (but by no means least) Elizabeth Goudge’s The Little White Horse
I would dearly love to scribble all over your new book, Jenny, I’ve got it preordered (I would however welcome a free copy!) 🙂
Well obviously i want one!
“To kill a mockingbird” gets me every time. It is tattered and beautiful and watching my daughter pick it up and rifle through it makes my heart so full.
I love ALL the books, but the ones I read over and over are To Kill a Mockingbird and The Poisonwood Bible. Many of my books have been bought used, and I especially enjoy really old books that other people have loved and made notes in, however, I was raised to take care of my books and treat them with reverence. I’ve never been one to even mark a book up with post-it notes and I rarely lend out books anymore because I freak out when they come back to me with grocery lists written in the margins and something weird and sticky on the cover.
Yes, please. Things are extra crummy right now, and I could use a little light.
I got your last 2 books in physical & audio formats. Some books just need to be held.
I would love to add your latest book to make a trinity of my Bloggess collection.
YASSSSSS 1000% this! Applauds
(some of the) books I love:
Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
The Humans by Matt Haig
Solitude by Anthony Storr
As an elementary librarian, I feel that joy when I see a well-loved book just get checked in and another student scoops it up before it even gets back on the shelf! What a happy life for a book! I’ve got the nasty habit of giving away books that I love and buying another copy, I must spread the love. I’m on my fourth copy of Furiously Happy. 💚
Lamb by Christopher Moore is my absolute go-to. No matter what’s going on in my life, I get such a case of the giggles from the minute I pick it up, because just looking at the cover reminds me of my favorite bits.
And yes yes yes I want the new book, obviously! 🙂
My favourites are My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell and The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak. I highly recommend The Book Thief, this book stays with you long after you’ve finished reading it.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. This book gave me hope that a nerdy girl who grew up in poor, poor family could overcome and do what she wants.
I’d love your books. They always help me though shitty situations.
American Gods, catch-22, heart of darkness, golden compass/amber spyglass (admittedly not crazy about subtle knife). Also have a picture book from the 80s called masquerade which had directions for some sort of treasure hunt but I never figured it out. Also have the Discworld books and bunch of Clive Cussler (Dirk Pitt) books and a ton of Manga (angel sanctuary, cantarella, d.n.angel, saiyuki, x/1999 (approach with caution any trigger sensitive types) are good rereads).
If even one person sees this post and hears about this book and finds it and reads it I will be so happy. Cookie Mueller’s ‘Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black’ is the most important book on my bookshelves. Short, beautiful, dark dark dark dark dark humor and at the same time very…fulfilling and honest and comforting. This doesn’t sell the book well enough…but maybe the wikipedia post about Cookie will do a better job. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie_Mueller
I first read The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell when I was 17, and no other book has matched up to it in fourteen years. Every time I read it, it’s like coming home.
Want?!?! I NEED your new book, and so does my sissypants! I was super excited when I saw you had a new book and then crushed when I saw it wasn’t out yet. Your books are very much a warm, fuzzy blanky I am compelled to drag around. I started with the audio of Furiously Happy, then on to your first book, then immediately had my sissy give them both a listen…then bought hard copies for both of us, from used book stores because I also love the feeling books with a reading history provide. Your books were an uncanny turning point in my life for many reasons.
I listen to audio books because I have a lengthy commute and found them to be a great way to use my stinky commute time to expand my mind and soul. I also listen to them when getting ready in the morning which means my Victor, er my fiance Tim, also must listen. He shrugs off just about everything that I am all “This is so nutty, and perfect, and a gift from the Universe!” about, but your books even convinced him, the most nay-sayery of all the nay-sayers. You and I have striking similarities and our relationship shares just as many similarities to yours and Victors. He thinks most things I am into are witch-crafty-voodoo type things but after I dragged him back into the bathroom one morning to listen to your story about you and Victor and your declaration of conquer over the pile of washed but unfolded laundry (which I declare every Sunday while resisting folding them because Timbo likes them folded) and Victor’s propensity for loathing clutter over cleanliness (my piles of books on our kitchen island drive him insane/his piles of crumbs everywhere make me crazy), even Tim said I ought to write you a letter to tell you that we are twins of some sort. You may or may not understand the weight of that comment from him because you don’t know us, but I assure you that it is a big bleeping deal! Sissypants can vouch for that.
Your books also gave me hope that I will be a successful writer (which is the only career I’ve dreamed about since I was a kid and have held onto relentlessly while ignoring the calling throughout my adult life) because our writing styles are eerily similar. This also struck some fear in me as I thought to myself and mentioned aloud to both Tim and my sissypants “Uh-oh, what if she thinks I’m plagiarizing her style? Now I can’t comment on her posts or anything…crap, maybe I can’t be a successful writer after all, I’ve waited too long!” and other blah, blah, blahs.
I had a miserable day at the office last week and my computer kept freezing so I said, “That’s it! I’m going for a walk!” On my walk, just across the street, there was a used book sale at the library. I happily took a much longer break than I should have and perused the tables full of used books stacking them in piles at the check-out table when I couldn’t fit them in my arms any longer and coming home with two very heavy bags of books. Not only was it super fun to lug those a few blocks to my Jeep at the end of the day with my two computers because they were intermittently not working so I had to have them both to work over the weekend (NOT on my dream of writing books) but it was equally as fun to see Tim’s eyes roll back into his head as I stacked them on our island…adding to my stack o’ crap that he adores so much. He was all, “Seriously? MORE books? What the hell are you going to do with more books? You already have too many!” I then explained, not nearly as eloquently as you did in this post, that I am going to READ them…over and over again. Because…books!
He is not a reader, not even a little bit, not even at all. He is a mechanical engineer. Sissypants and I call him the cyborg for a reason, well, for many reasons. One of them being he has no idea what it is like to be in love with things, lots of things, especially words. So your post here finally urged me to break my what-if-she-thinks-I’m-plagiarizing-her silence because, damn it, I just had to. Though we are so very similar in many ways, we are equally different so I am (trying to convince myself to be) confident that even though we write and speak alike, our differences will prevent us from telling the same stories and will allow us to both indulge our thirst for words without repetition. 🙂
The moral of this long-ass story? I beat the crap out of the multiple copies I have of your books. I keep them in my car and my purse and I revisit them, among others, and write in them and highlight them and cover them with neon tabs to grab my attention to my favorite parts again and again.
Oh yeah, this all started because I was all “Heck yeah I’ll share some of my favorite, part-of-me books!” so I suppose I should do that before I go. Here are the most recent additions to my holy-crap-you-have-to-read-these list:
~(Surely it goes without saying, but just in case it needs said) Furiously Happy and Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by the fabulous Jenny Lawson
~The Anatomy of a Calling by the beautiful Lissa Rankin
~The Awkward Yeti Presents Heart and Brain by the brilliant Nick Seluk
~Big Magic by the graceful Elizabeth Gilbert
~Why Isn’t my Brain Working by the loquacious Datis Kharrazian
~1 Page at a Time by the playful Adam J. Kurtz
~Juicy Pens Thirsty Paper by the whimsical SARK
~A Mind of Your Own by the lovely Kelly Brogan, MD
~The Untethered Soul by the remarkable Michael Singer
I better stop there, eventually I have to get ready for work and go to my awesome (insert extreme sarcasm and a look that could kill) job…meh!
Thanks for being you, Jenny Lawson, and thanks for being on this big old spinning, wet rock at the same time as the rest of us! We are forever grateful for your words and courage and beauty!!!!
Not necessarily my favorites (how could I?!?) but I love Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and Sandman series, and Good Omens with Terry Pratchett, and Thud, also by Terry Pratchett, and Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar series, and the Enchanted Forest books by Patricia C. Wrede, and the Cat series and Snow Queen series by Joan D Vinge, and the Amber series by Roger Zelazny, and about a thousand more. I love books.
I would love one
I am also very hard on books. You’ve made me feel less monsterish.
Richard Bach’s Illusions. I still have the paperback copy that I purchased when I was 12 back in 1980. I used to read it every year and probably should resurrect the tradition. A lot of the pages have separated from the spine and spill out when I open it, but I lovingly tuck them back in each and every time. There are so many profound quotes in that book. Here’s an example:
“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.”
Oh I would love the new book – my daughter needs this book desperately!
And I have an author list so long but the high points are: The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Sword of Truth series, The Bridges of Madison County, The Amber series, The Harry Dresden series – just to name a few.
90% of my books are bought used. Mainly because I’m poor as balls, but also because I love having things that other people once loved. I rescue a lot of stuff…books, animals, clothes, records. My house is an orphanage…things that no one wants anymore always seem to find their way to me. Some day this will happen to all of my things, including my books. I hope they will end up with someone who will love them like I did.
Oh, I love Alice book’s!!! There is a sort of re-telling/Wonderland based series called Splintered by A.G. Howard – LOVE IT. There are 3 books in the series. I also love Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom.
The Colour Purple by Alice Walker, The Hours by Michael Cunningham and. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. While there are many, many more that I love dearly, these are the ones I have read the most. Inside and out dozens of time. The ones that remind me I’m not alone. The ones that remind me I’m not the only one who’s been hurt. The ones that remind me I’m not the only ‘weird’ one. The ones that remind me I am loved.
I’m pretty careful with my books – but I’m also one of those people who uses a lip gloss or a pen until the entire thing is used up and still has and uses the fountain pen my grandfather gave me in high school, almost 20 years later. However, my copies of the Little House on the Prairie books have had so much wear, and I tend to re read them when I’m in a depression so they are often read in small chunks and left laying open for hours across the edge of the chairs or towel rails in the bathroom so they are in a deplorable state. I’m on at least my third set. I’m not even 40 yet!
I’d love a copy of your coloring book when it comes out – I’ve actually never bought a physical book of yours, but I have both of your books on Audiobooks, and they are some of my favorites.
I have already preordered and marked my calendar for the hopeful date it will be shipped. Thank you thank you thank you for helping me through my times when i get lost. I am there!
As a kid, anything by Madeline L’Engle (Wrinkle in Time, A Swiftly Tilting Planet), who showed me that the world was bigger than the limits of my chaotic childhood. As an adult, anything by Dorothy Allison (Bastard Out of Carolina, Two or Three Things I know for Sure), who taught me that all those scars and rough edges are sometimes exactly what you need to make it in a messy, imperfect, joyful world. And, really, every book I’ve ever touched has saved me somehow.
And of course, You Are Here would be great to add to the collection of books my spouse will curse the next time we move.
I have reading copies and shelf copies of a few of my favorite books–mostly because pages were falling out of the reading copies and I wanted a backup in case I lost any parts. Reason’s to Live by Amy Hempel, On Writing by Steven King, Bird by Bird by Ann Lamott are just a few. The list could go on. I just bought a physical copy of Furiously Happy. (I previously only had it on Audiobook). I suspect it will get some worn sections before long.
(And I’d love a copy of your new book!)
The Princess Bride by William Goldman. The only book I’ve ever had to buy a new copy of, because I destroyed my first from carrying it around so much.
Harry Potter. Specifically my paperback collection. I have the hard covers and those are all cracked and read but when I re-read the series, it’s always my paperback editions. The covers are torn, they’ve been dropped in swimming pools and bathtubs, and some of the text is rubbing off on certain pages. Whenever I’m feeling not quite like myself, I can open one of those books and be at Hogwarts with characters who feel like friends and suddenly I don’t feel so crappy anymore.
I would LOVE one.
Team Victor on this one – I handle my books with kid gloves! Not sketchbooks, journals, or coloring books, though – they are fair game!
I would love a copy to colour & contemplate….if they fly as far as Australia.
As a child, beanbag dragged to the 000 end of the Dewy decimals row at the back of the library where no one ever went….curled up reading the Neverending Story on a rainy day. The book was enormous. I don’t believe I emerged from there all day…
SHE’S COME UNDONE by Wally Lamb– my copy is battered and worn down as smoothly as a river rock. Also, my copy of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A LITTLE PRINCESS is over 30 years old and barely still bound together. The price is marked on the front– $1.95. I remember my favorite aunt giving it to me for Christmas when I was in the 2nd grade. 🙂
I am made nervous by the books I’m about to list, about what they say about me as a person, but I shall stand them here, tall and proud, and let them speak for themselves.
The Stand by Stephen King
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by JK Rowling
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Those last 2 are my catastrophe books. When I need to get through hard shit, those are my jam. If Marguerite can do it, I can too. If Janie can live through it, I can too.
My copy of “your Money or Your Life” by Vicki Robin looks like a sad and droopy hedgehog with all the stickies, flags and page markers. And coffee, if I’m honest. I’m also on my third copy of “The Blue Sword” – a rousing YA adventure with serious insight into the power of fate and accepting your destiny. And I would so love a coloring book (even though I’ve pretty much made my own and posted all the pages on Facebook).
Sorry, Victor, but YOU ARE WRONG! Books should be read until they fall apart only to get a new copy to love all over again. My books like that are “Inspite of All Terror” by Hester Burton about England during the Blitz (worn out THREE copies already) and Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter Series. An unloved book is a pristine book. But then I don’t consider Comic Books on the same reading level as a paperback or hardcover. Sue me!
This is exactly the reason that I don’t like e-books. I like the way books SMELL.
One of my favorite book series is by David Eddings. “The Belgariad” – all 5 books. I refer to them as old friends.
Well, not to be cliche, but both of your books are on the top of my list. In fact, I was having a rather dark moment recently and as my brain kept slipping down further into darker and darker places, a little voice repeated “your brain is lying to you. Be Furiously Happy!”
In addition to yours, I love The Longest Trip Home by John Grogan and The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls.
I’ve preorered two copies of your new book (my 15yo daughter is a huge fan too), but I’d definitely take a third ( so I always have on perfect copy since I just can’t bring myself to love books the way you do, but I might have to start).
I used to care for books like Victor, until all my writing instructors told me to mark them up, draw in them, highlight the best lines and fold down (save) the pages that speak to me. I have a few well-loved books too. My “Courage to Change” is only held together with hope these days, spine is broken and the cover’s peeling off. I have a couple of beat-up books by Ann Lammott.
Please throw my name in the hat, I would LOVE a copy of “you Are Here” to complete my Jenny Lawson collection!
I’m a terrible adult and do not read books very often. This summer is the exception where I have read Furiously Happy and I’m about halfway through Let’s Pretend This Never Happened! I am generally of Victor’s “books shall remain pristine” camp but again this summer is the exception and my books have a layer of beach sand and sunscreen on them – never any writing though. As for a favorite book – Charlie & the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl 😊
I just got new bookcases for my office and I can’t wait to fill them with my heavily used/loved books. The entire Anne of Green Gables series, The Belgariad books (all 10 of them) by David Eddings, travel guides and more. The thread here reminds me that it’s been too long since I reread Little Princess and Secret Garden. My books are some of my best friends, and they show it.
I love your blog. I just found you recently and celebrate every time I see an “unread” notification by your icon in my RSS feed. You inspire me to write!
A good friend of mine recently said “They’re only books. Just things.” So I’m on board with loving books to death. I have a copy of “The Two Towers” I bought when I was in High School from the local used book store. I love it because it has an old cover, plus it smells like a book. That warm but musty scent of a good story. Makes me want to take up pipe smoking if I could. But I can’t.
Anyway. Choose me!
I have “Charlotte’s Web” in both English and Spanish (“La Telaraña de Carlota”) and it brings back fond memories of when my 5th grade teacher read it aloud to us every day for a week. I had to put my head down on my desk when Charlotte died. That was about 55 years ago. It still affects me the same way.
I’ll start with Jane Eyre and Watership Down. More recently, Eleanor and Park, which left me sobbing at the end. And it’s not a specific book, but DiscWorld generally has become part of me.
I was introduced to your blog a few years ago, by a friend who needed something like this so greatly, it has been therapeutic for him. Today he is trying to get further help with his inner beauties and I would love to be able to gift him a copy of “You Are Here”. I think it could be comforting and it would comfort me as well.
Books I have destroyed “perks of being a wallflower”, “the thornbirds”, & “the art of racing in the rain”
So I already ordered 3 of your new book, but who’s to say I couldn’t use a 4th? I don’t know who they will all go to, but hopefully my sister will be out of rehab and in a good place by March and I will feel she is deserving of gifts again, because I think she would really get a kick out of it.
As for books I love, Furiously Happy is up there (not trying to be a kiss ass, but it is what it is) as well as The Dark Tower series and the Hitchhiker’s Guide “Trilogy.” I feel you are in good company. I hope you feel the same.
Generally I’m with Victor on this one, and don’t like my books getting worn at all. But if someone has the nerve to write in a book (not MY book), I’m always interested in what would move them to write or underline or annotate.
I have read and re read your book so many times…they are on my nook so not damaged but if they were hard copies I imagine they would be duct taped together by now…my go to book also are the Harry Potter series and the Gargoyle.
I would love your new book…you have helped me more than you will ever know:) thanks for being real.
I’ll have to admit that of all the things you have written this is the one that has most resonated with me. It’s almost as if you took all the thoughts from my head and all the feelings lurking deep in my heart and put them out there. I live IN my books. I write notes in the margins. I underline my favorite passages. I’ll circle a word that I may not know. I’ll write down someone’s name next to a paragraph that I feel will be useful to them. And in every book, after I’ve read it, I write my own critique. How I felt about it, how it moved me, what I got out of it. I do that because this is one of the things that I want my children and grandchildren and great grandchildren to inherit, to pass down, to scroll through to get to know who I was. Each book has a piece of me in it. It took a part of MY soul, of MY time, of MY thoughts as I read each page, and I connected with it. A used book in my home is a loved book and carries LIFE in it.
A few of my favorite books are:
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho
Timoleon Vieta Come Home by Dan Rhodes
Horns by Joe Hill
Night by Elie Wiesel
These brought out so much emotion in me and I lived through the story with each page. Thank you for feeling the same way. Thanks for explaining so beautifully that a tattered book is a loved book.
— The Pretty Platform (a.k.a. Elke)
LOVE this. YES. I am the same when it comes to books.
My child steals my sleep, so please forgive me for not knowing the author of my favorite books. I can barely remember the titles. A Celestine Prophecy (because it opened my mind to the energy I put out into the universe), The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind (because it is deliciously full of magic and danger and whimsy), and A Wrinkle in Time (because every time I read it I am transported back to the first time, as a ten year old full of wonder at all of the great and terrible things inside the book).
I would LOVE a copy of your new book when it comes out!
Thank you for posting this! I never understood why a book should not be loved. Just like the quilts i make – i hate when people put them up in a closet so they won’t get worn. that’s the point of me giving the gift of my love and passion – so it can show how much i love them and i would hope they would love it back!
Throwing my little hat in the ring…I’d love a copy of your new book (if I win, the pre-ordered version will go to my daughter for her to love and destroy as only she can!)
I’ve passed along my love of books to my girls. We all have books and copies that we’ve loved nearly to death over the years. My guilty pleasure books are ALL of the Drizzt books by R.A. Salvatore. I’ve had to buy new copies of several of them because I’ve worn them out to the point where not only the covers have fallen off and the spines have been broken, I began to notice pages missing when I went back to re-read. So I had to get new ones to love all over again.
I love finding old, well-loved books. Especially those who have notes in the margins, highlighted passages and other notations. I love seeing what other people thought of a book or to see if we pointed out the same passages as important or awesome.
While I love the convenience of my Kindle, there’s nothing quite like cracking open a book and inhaling the scent. Is that weird?
Alice Hoffman is my current favorite author for “The Dovekeepers, “The Marriage of Opposites” and “The Museum of Extraordinary Things”. I luuuhv Alan Brennert’rs “Moloka’i” and “Honolulu” (but not so much “Palisades Park”). I also love Jules Vern and Ken Follett and Lisa See and Philipa Gregory. “The Poisonwood Bible” gives me feels. Gosh, I think everyone should read “The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, the Horse that Inspired a Nation” because it really is inspiring, and I always recommend it and no one ever follows through. And oh my…”The Scarlet Letter” and “As I Lay Dying” and “Their Eyes Were Watching God”. I cannot stop! Oh, and Jenny Lawson! She makes me laugh A LOT and helps me to understand how my daughter’s brain works.
I’m a hybrid…love the act of turning pages and feeling the physical book but having a Nook allows me to take MANY with me at one time. While I don’t purposefully damage my paper books, they do get love-worn after so many readings.
Favorite books…The Outsiders, Watership Down, The Hunger Games Series, The Green Mile (paper copy on my end table right now), 11/22/63, The Stand, The Color Purple, Watchers, Fear Nothing, Seize the Night, Water for Elephants, Life of Pi. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlotte’s Web and Bunnicula (from my younger days).
So many books that I just love to come back to over and over. It’s as if the characters are real and we have to visit every so often to catch up. Going to a book store is such adventure and torture at the same time…I want new books to see where they will take me but I love my old friends and want to stay with them where I know where the familiar road leads. Plus there’s the whole pesky part about having to actually pay for the books. sigh
I would LOVE a copy of your book!
I have two favourite “desert island must reread at least once a year you’ll pry them from my cold dead hands” books: Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods and Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
My teen daughter has read her Harry Potter books so often and so well that they are no longer book-shaped. They are worn and curved from her hands, and their paper covers are as soft as silk. These books are her safe place.
A few of my most important books: Homer’s Odyssey by Gwen Cooper (about a cat born with no eyes), Orlando by Virginia Woolf, and The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.
Thanks to everyone for sharing your books.
I use my books, too! I love that there are so many others of us out there!
My grandfather gifted a copy of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” to my grandmother when they met in Cairo, Egypt during WWII. She had no interest in this kind of gift due to her socialites sensibilities. He wrote an absolutely horrific poem to her, an ode, inside the pages of the book. I don’t remember the entire story of how she came to come across the poem but it was a treasure she secretly loved. The book is falling apart and yellowed with age now. That book is my greatest treasure and I hope to pass it on to my son some day.
I love finding a book that someone has done a lot of underlining and writing it. It’s a map to what they thought was important in the book, to what inspired them or made them think.
I am with Victor on this one. I cherish my books and treat them delicately. I stopped lending books to people because they would not respect them and put them on the pedestal they deserve. I like the way you describe it though, that they are loved. It still makes me shudder though.
I just published my first book and I find that I too, appreciate, a well loved book. It means they’ve read it and read it and read it. I think it also means they find something new in it every time they read it. I’m anxiously awaiting my copy of Furiously Happy and I’ve already pre-ordered your new book. I’m a new fan of yours. My favorite books are from James Harriot but my most tattered book is from Dr. M. Scott Peck.
I do the same thing…I write all over my books, dog ear the pages…consume them. Some of the books I have from my teenage years are literally held together by threads. Books I need – anything by Madeleine L’Engle, Michener’s Centennial, Jodi Picoult’s Ten Circles, Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer and Harry Potter (it’s really all one book)
I don’t know why I read your blogs, but they make me happy.( when you think about it it seems contradictory doesn’t it? It’s just basically saying I read your blogs because they make me happy)
I wish I was. There.
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan! I have read this so many times almost all my copies are damaged in some way!
You’ve made me feel a lot less guilty that my books often sustain water and/or coffee damage 🙂
I can only suggest The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan, who passed away a few years ago. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a buttload of books. http://amzn.to/2aKkKFi
Could not agree with you MORE on loving your books to DEATH! Have the same dynamic with my hubby and his comix:)
Favorite Books:
1. Isabel’s Bed: Elinor Lipman/I’ve reread 100 times and have cast the movie. Would LOVE to know your picks for the lead characters.
2. Stacy: Perverted Playboy novel my parents bought me when i was a tween not realizing that it was a naughty novel. (it had my name spelled correctly – they could NOT resist) reminds me of that blossoming time in my youth
3. New York: Edward Rutherfurd/LONG wonderful historical fiction book – YUM (he also has good books about other cities)
4. FURIOUSLY HAPPY: I have not only read and lent my copy – but given it to two others.
Aww now I need to love more on my books @thebloggess. I like to underline stuff,most of the time I end up doing the whole page!
I do have some books that are in less than pristine condition but I tend to take care of mine because what if I love one to death and then can’t find a copy because it’s gone out of print??? I reread my favorites because I like to visit with old friends. I have Kindles and lots of real books and use them all. I’m proud to say my spare bedroom has no room for more than an inflatable single bed because it’s really my library, although there are bookshelves in more rooms than that one. And I love knowing I’m not the only one who buys multiple copies of my favorites so that I can loan them out. I think I have 4 versions of my favorite book, The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas–one in my prized possession, a matched series of Dumas’ historical novels, one copy that came from my grandmother’s collection, a loaner and moveable paperback copy, and one on the Kindle. My oldest books are from the 1760s and my newest was bought at a Steampunk convention 2 weekends ago and autographed by the author. Um, yeah. Books.
I have a book that I read & took with me everywhere I moved until I had to tape the cover back on and the pages are falling out. So I bought a second copy, and kept the first. I’m on #3 now by the way.
Sandman definitely changed my life. I carried all 10 volumes in a gift bag, back and forth with me during midterm exams (when we weren’t allowed backpacks) because something I needed to cross-reference. My Delirium tattoo (and Delirium the real, live hedgehog) can attest to that. I am also very attached to One Door Away from Heaven by Dean Koontz. And I will forever be in debt that that copy of Romeo & Juliet from freshman year of high school, as it was the first time I was encouraged to write in a book. Not my favorite Shakespeare play ever but it marked the first time I truly engaged with a text.
Clive Barker Coldheart Canyon… dog eared, loved, used and abused.
I have books I WISH I had stuck random receipts into because now there are certain passages I want to read again but I don’t have the time to find them and it’s bugging me!
My eye sight is not what it used to be so I kinda need the Kindle. The problem is that I don’t get the satisfaction of breaking the spine of the book in 3 places before I start reading. I miss it and I’m glad I’m not the only person who breaks the spine or folds over pages to go back to. Bookmarks, bah humbug.
Most read;
The Stand by Stephen King
Dune Trilogy & the rest by Frank Herbert (but nothing after he died)
Game of Thrones Trilogy by George R.R. Martin (it went sideways w/books after that)
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
As a kid I loved all the Heinlein books, he was ahead of his time. However, in trying to reread them now, it is painful to see the misogyny within them. For his time (and in my youth) it wasn’t so clear. The Tolkien Trilogy (read the first time at 12 and so many times after, I cannot even read it again, YET).
These two books helped me get myself back from trauma that might have been avoided. I wish someone had handed them to me when I was 14, should be required reading;
Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker
Why Does He Do That by Lundy Bancroft
Wind in the Willows, Watership Down & ANYTHING by Ray Bradbury.
My favorite books are from the Dragonriders of Pern series. My favorites are Dragonflight, Dragonquest, The White Dragon, and Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern. I found The White Dragon at a used book store on my one and only trip, so far, to California. I read it, loved it, and found the others. I am able to read series books out of order (it drives my wife crazy).
I am always late for these things, but I would love a copy of your new, beautiful book.
I fall more into the Victor camp where I feel really bad if I damage a book, so I’ve been trying to get over that with a Wreck this Journal. It’s a (slow) work in progress. Maybe your new book can help me with that.
Despite careful handling, I have managed to love a few books to death. My copies of Noel Streatfeild’s Dancing Shoes and Robert Heinlein’s Friday are two that spring to mind.
Books I love: The Last Unicorn, by Peter S Beagle. Anything by Dave Duncan, but the Man of his Word quadrology, plus the sequel quadrology and anything set in the Sword worlds. Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes. Tailchaser’s Song by Tad Williams.
I’d love your new book 🙂 I’m going to get a copy even if I don’t win one 🙂
I love worn books as well, and I can’t wait for your third book to come out. Reading your blog helps me get through stressful days. Thank you for sharing your humor and understanding. I struggle with anxiety, and it’s so comforting to read that i’m not alone.
I reread The Great Gatsby every year and one of the best parts is noticing the marks I’ve made next to my favorite lines and the notes I’ve made in the margins over the years for past papers/reports. It’s like looking back at myself over the years- seeing what spoke to me on past readings. I also have my mom’s old copy of Jane Eyre, which is not only coverless but half introduction-less, and the last page has been faux-laminated with scotch tape to keep it somewhat together. And I love it.
I’m definitely in the “love books by using them” camp. Tattered equals well-read. I’ve had a couple friends borrow books and accidentally let them get a little battered or coffee-splattered and I always turn down their offers to replace it (provided it’s not completely wrecked). Luckily my best friend who I swap books with the most also shares my view, so we’ve been cheerfully carting around each other’s books for years without overtly worrying about keeping them prI Stine.
Although I did lend my (signed) copy of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened to another friend about a year ago and haven’t gotten it back, which I need to do.
The Harry Potter series is probably our favorite family book. Everytime I see one of the tattered copies lying around the house – likely because some is rereading it, again- it reminds me of the joy my family finds in reading together.
My favorite, read-again-and-again book is: “Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah” by Richard Bach. I am also just now reading “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened”, (since I only recently discovered the Bloggess, Jenny Lawson) which could quickly become another favorite!
Rise and Shine by Anna Quindlen. It’s been my favorite for years. My newer favorite is The Night Circus. I own both as kindle books and as actual books. I mostly by things on the kindle, but sometimes you need the feel of pages in your hand.
Pride & Prejudice – my childhood copy is torn and tattered and perfectly beautiful. And I’ve listened to the entire Harry Potter series on audiobook often enough to recite most of it. Well loved.
I preordered the first day, but had considered getting a second copy (hint). I’m probably going to have to buy Furiously Happy AGAIN because I generously shared mine and haven’t gotten it back. The cover of F.H. is what hooked me … I have a (toy) stuffed squirrel in the same exact pose as the raccoon. Used to take the squirrel to therapy with me…. (long story, crazy dream) Therapist has since moved away, so – TAG – you’re IT, Jenny!
Women who run with wolves…my divorcing woman’s bible…the whole thing is totalled!
The Hobbit and all three Lord of the Rings books. I’ve been reading them since I was pre-teen, and I’m 54. My LotR books are all tattered and dogeared. I lost count of how many times I had read them a couple of decades ago.
I have also ruffled the hell out of my old copy of Watership Down. Those of you who have only seen the movie need to read the book. You’re missing out on so many little moments that didn’t make it into the film.
And finally, you fantasy folk should look for Robert Don Hughes’ Pelman the Powershaper books. The Prophet of Lamath, The Wizard in Waiting, and The Power and the Prophet. Beautiful, crazy, rich, comforting stories. Again, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read them.
My copy of The Princess Bride would probably be incredibly dog-eared and tattered, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m always needing to buy new copies b/c I gave my last copy to a friend who had somehow never read it before.
My high school senior English class was AP English, and basically all we had to do was read books and do projects on them. Our entire class time was devoted to reading. BEST. CLASS. EVER. I still have the list of books we could choose from for our projects, and get it out from time to time to pick out a book to read. I still love The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and am so happy that my son is now reading the Harry Potter series so I can read them with him. 🙂 Would love to win a copy of your new book. You have so many talents, Jenny – thank you for sharing them.
Anytime I need a pick-me-up it has to be Bridget Jones’ Diary.
Listening to Furiously Happy opened my mind to to things that are out of my control. My auto immune pain and coming to grips that it’s for life. What hit me hardest was when you talk about everyone having a “number of spoons” for a day. I was getting ready for work when I heard that and it made me cry! I’ve pushed past my limit of spoons too many times and it hurt! As I’m typing this, I’m on hold to get my injections refilled. I didn’t know I needed you until I found you. You make things so much better for me! Much Love to you!
Oh, as far as a favorite book…..I love them ALL! Anything that makes me laugh.
Such as “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened”!
I love all my books! Harry Potter series is one of my favorites, however, currently reading some Nora Roberts. Would love a copy of your new book!
Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger — dog-eared for sure. Here’s the first chapter: http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/peace-like-a-river/excerpt
From that chapter:
“Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It’s true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in. Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave — now there’s a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time. When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth.
“My sister, Swede, who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear miracles because they fear being changed — though ignoring them will change you also. Swede said another thing, too, and it rang in me like a bell: No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here’s what I saw. Here’s how it went. Make of it what you will.”
I’ve have long had a fondness for Stephen King, because when I was growing up, I was comforted to read stories that were more miserable than my actual existence. Which was pretty farking miserable at the time. I’d have a hard time picking just one. I have also found Dean Koontz’s “Watchers” and “Strangers” to be deeply moving.
Wow! his post is echoing Helene Hanff in 84 Charing Cross Road – one of my favorite books. (The movie was pretty good too!)
Favourite Book …. has to be the Harry Potter Series … which is cheating I know because it’s a series … but it’s nice to leave real life and hang out with wizards every once in a while … 🙂
After lovingly using my copy of your first book Let’s Pretend this Never Happened, I passed it on to a co-worker friend who was recently diagnosed with cancer. She has a great sense of humor, and I thought laughter might be the best medicine in the form of your book. Here’s what she had to say:
Dear Michele,
I recently sent out a group Thank You for the excellent gift basket from all you wonderful Allina people. (This was Susan’s recommendation because there were several items for which I couldn’t identify the specific sender). Still, I have to tell you, specifically, two things: 1) I really appreciate the “Punch” card—so very appropriate for many well intended but clueless people trying to offer support, and 2) the Jenny Lawson book is hilarious! There is a greater significance to this second piece of information: I have a pile of books from people but have been completely unable to get into any of them, and they are great books. Jenny Lawson, however, has broken that trend and I am whipping through it like a box of candy. Your generous gift and the sense of humor that caused you to send it to me are both much appreciated!
Now I’ll go back to being a chemo patient and to my new friend Jenny. Stay dry today, and cool!
Jan
I’d love a copy of your new book. My favorites are Terry Pratchett’s “Tiffany Aching books”. As well as Stephen King.
Great books have little smudges of chocolate on them, with some chip crumbs inside.
Honestly I would love one. I’ve been looking for a new book that I can live inside of. I need that kind of escape.
Honestly I would love one! I’m looking for a new book to live in. I could use the escape.
Love this sharing. I read The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell after one of your readers recommended it. I am half way through the sequel, Children of God, now. So thoughtful provoking.
a couple favs:
Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim
My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok (The Chosen is very special too)
so many more
would love a copy of your new book too!
My daughter is just like Victor! She won’t let me read her books because I’ll damage them. I am so looking forward to your new book.
I would love a copy of your new book. I love the smell and feel of a new book but also the looks of a well loved book.
I cannot wait for this to come out!
Honestly I would love one! I’m looking for a new book to live in. I could use the escape.
I was at a book signing once for Mercedes Lackey and the copy of Magic’s Pawn that she was signing was ragged and loved and she commented on loving to see them loved. 🙂 Aside from older Mercedes Lackey books, I adore the witch books by Debora Geary. I would love to have a copy of your new book if I’m chosen.
The Narnia Series by C.S. Lewis. Read, re-read, then read again when I was younger! Would love your new book!
I tend to get all my books from the library so I’m definitely uber careful with my books! I then do the same with my owned books out of habit. No dog-eared pages here!
Some favorites:
“The Transmigration of Timothy Archer” by Philip K. Dick
“A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeline L’Engle
“We Have Always Lived in the Castle” by Shirley Jackson
“Brothers Karamazov” by Fyodor Dostoevsky
“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot
I would love to win a copy of your book; I am sure it will be a favorite, too.
A River Runs Through It.
and The Velveteen Rabbit.
both are timeless, beautiful and end too quickly.
your newest book looks marvelous!
Furiously Happy is the most damaged of my books. I like to keep my books in decent shape, but that one has traveled with me and it shows. (Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman is possibly in slightly worse shape, but that’s because my husband left it on the floor.)
I went through a period after a house fire when I said “No more paper book, all electronic now”. But what I realized I missed was the soul of the book, the feel of the book in my hands, the smell of the paper (there are few smells better than an old bookstore), some of my best memories as a kid are the smells in this super sketchy shop that sold paperbacks (that I now know were “stripped” and cheated the author of fair pay for their work) and I would sit on the floor for hours counting my money and trying to get the most books. My Dad introduced me to this shop and until we moved from that town several months later, I could be found there every Friday after school.
John Powers’ “The Unoriginal Sinner and the Ice Cream God”. I bought it in 1978 when I was a freshman in college because I thought it looked like a good read. I was standing in line at the University of Colorado bookstore, buying my textbooks for my first semester. That book made me laugh until I cried and cry until I laughed. I was lucky enough to meet the author at a safety conference in 2005. I happened to be talking to some of the board members that he was my favorite author and they made me go wait in line to talk to him. (He was selling his most recent book too). So I did. And when it was my turn, I shook his hand and told him that my favorite book was the one I mentioned before and he got the biggest smile on his face and said You are the only person today who mentioned that book–or any of my books! I talked to him for about 10 minutes and bought his book and he signed it “From your biggest fan–John Powers”. He passed away a few years later
I just finished Let’s Pretend This Never Happened and I loved it even more than Furiously Happy, if that’s possible. I think everyone can relate to at least one of your stories; if not, they’re kidding themselves or just don’t have a sense of humor. I read so many parts of Furiously Happy to my 16 year old daughter, she was angry, feeling like she couldn’t read the book now, since I’d shared “all the best parts”. I’m so happy to hear you have a new book coming out. Thank you for sharing your life, wit and journey with us.
In terms of favorite books, that’s hard…there are so many great books. I love Pat Conroy’s books, especially Prince of Tides; I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsilver and The Fault in Our Stars by John Green Yikes, I’m seeing a theme here and it’s a little depressing. Also, I love children’s books. I few of my favorites are Alexander and the Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day and Molly Lou Melon, Anne of Green Gables series, Little House on the Prairie series and the Junie B. Jones series. Anyway, keep writing, please!
My most ruined books are Cryptonomicon, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and Tam Lin. My old copies were all eventually held together with rubber bands. Now my Kindle is suffering all my love, since my arthritis makes holding regular books too painful.
The Kindle is the Velveteen Rabbit of books, in time my love will completely destroy it, and it will become a real library, running free in the woods, with the other libraries.
I love Neil Gaiman. I’m reading Neverwhere right now!
I so envy those of you that can ‘love’ a book so thoroughly. While I do have books that I enjoy, often think of, and love, I have a very difficult time putting them through the ringer. I KNOW it would give the book more character in showing how much I’ve enjoyed it, but I just can’t make myself not take good care of them. One of my favorites is Phantom Tollbooth. 🙂
That’s the one thing I miss with eBooks. You can highlight and bookmark, and re-read passages all day long, and it will still look as pristine as the day you first loaded it. But REAL books- there’s something tactile and definitive about them. That’s why I will still buy physical copies of books I like. So I can see them, and handle them, and loan them out (because EVERYONE should like what I like)!!!!
The most magical book I have ever read is a book called “Twig” by Elizabeth Orton Jones. It’s a “kids” book, but I find sometimes those have the best lessons. Your daughter would probably enjoy it too. Haven’t read it? Do yourself a favor and read it outside on a hammock on a breezy day… You won’t be disappointed!!
So much yes. That is EXACTLY how I treat my books. The same way children treat their stuffed animals. We all know that the stuffed animals that stay pretty and perfect are the ones that got the least hugs, and lived through minimal adventures.
So it is with my books.
When I was a kid, I read and reread “Spindle’s End” by Robin McKinley, obsessively. I loved it so much, because it told the story of a girl who, for once, did NOT want to be a princess. She worked with horses, and learned magic, and explored the bogs, and was as tomboyish as you can be. “Finally, a fairytale for me!” I thought. The cover fell off. A few times.
I would love a copy!! Your drawings amaze me with all the little details and little messages.
Most of my books have crumbs, drunk stains and dog ears. Because books are meant to be loved
One of my all time favorite books is I Am The Cheese by Robert Cormier. If you haven’t read it you should really consider it. It’s amazing. I’m definitely going to check out some of the titles you mentioned. I have a library of books, and I always buy hardcover because I would destroy the soft covers too quickly!!! Tell Victor it his books need to live and breath……. they will wither and die alone and unread and will have led a pointless life if he keeps them locked up in their plastic prisons. very very sad indeed
One of my all time favorite books is “I Am The Cheese” by Robert Cormier. If you haven’t read it you should really consider it. It’s amazing. I’m definitely going to check out some of the titles you mentioned. I have a library of books, and I always buy hardcover because I would destroy the soft covers too quickly!!! Tell Victor it his books need to live and breath……. they will wither and die alone and unread and will have led a pointless life if he keeps them locked up in their plastic prisons. very very sad indeed
Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret as a kid. Judy Blume got me through puberty! Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None was my first mystery that I read over and over. The book Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh also captured my young heart. Until Harry Potter! Honestly your Let’s Pretend book was one of the first I was able to devour after having a massive lightning bolt shaped hole in my life.
Thank you! 💖 Donna
I’ve always felt a little ashamed at how battered my books have become. Especially when compared to my brother’s who are perfectly lined up and alphabetized. I’m so happy someone finally said out loud that it’s like a sign of respect to the author and the characters that I’ve read their stories over and over again! ^_^
For comfort, Anne of Green Gables, but when I need to laugh, the early books in the Vorkosigan series by series by Lois McMaster Bujold
I love books! The best kinds are the ones where you can escape to another world, or feel better about yourself in this current one. I have read Jane Austen, Paolo Coelho, J.K. Rowling, Jenny Lawson… and I feel stronger, kinder, braver, and smarter because of it.
Of course, I would love a copy of “You Are Here”! That would be amazing! But I already feel quite privileged to have read so many wonderful, enthralling, and amazing stories already. “You Are Here” will definitely go on my Christmas wish-list, but perhaps someone else deserves it or needs it more this time around.
I would love a copy of your new book!! My favorites come from childhood. White Fang by Jack London and the Elsie Dinsmore series by Martha Finley (the original written in the 1800’s, not the revised edition). Both saved me from suicide multiple times when I was a young teen, and I passed them on to my eldest niece when she turned 12. I love reading, and am thankful for technology that allows me to read millions of books for free (Check out WattPad). I could never afford to buy the 20-30 books I read each month. But nothing beats cracking open an old tattered book that has sat forgotten on the shelf for years.
I’ve found that Post-It flags are amazing for marking pages that I want to go back to. My Game of Thrones books are full of them.
One of the things that my husband said attracted him to me was all the books on my shelves that had obviously been well read and loved! Can’t pick just one, sometimes it’s a biography and sometimes it’s a forensic manual. Off the subject….How about a Rory t-shirt? Any thought of that? I can’t see him enough and would love to share him with more people. (if they like it or NOT!!!) BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
The 1st, 4th and 7th Harry Potter books, where he gets to be with dead family/friends. They comfort me and make me feel like I can be with the people I’ve lost too. Hopefully not facing Voldemort or a dragon though.
I am a spine-breaking/damage-causing convert. I used to be 100% in camp Victor on this debate, but over the years I have fallen in love with well-used field guides and scribbled journals. Later, I realized that the same beauty of use and running thoughts written in the margins in other books mark my “aha” moments and add a wonderful layer to the item. They are physical reminders of those moments like photographs, but they ask me to use more of my imagination to relive them, just like reading the book does.
Thank you for celebrating the well-loved book!
Also, I just wanted to let you know that WordPress wouldn’t allow me to leave a comment without logging in. I had to dig my password out of the cobwebs of my brain.
I would be the luckiest person if chosen!!!!
I love reading your blog
It is a breath of fresh air to me
I do get enchanted by your words and the honesty that it possesses.
With love,
Ruby
All Toni Morrison books especially Beloved and The Bluest Eye which woke me up to the world and taught me that poetry lives in novels too; To Kill a Mockingbird because Scout; Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle (chilling and brilliant) and Raising Demons and Life Among the Savages (hilarious); Pride and Prejudice and Wharton’s The Bucaneers for period romance with wit; and there are some I’ve left behind but still stay with me like The Thornbirds which I read at least once a year between the ages of 14 and 20. Oh and Their Eyes Were Watching God for Janie and Teacake falling in love while fishing in their overalls. God I love books. Thank you Jenny for loving them hard too and for your words which make me laugh till I pee (my 14 year old daughter just read the Copernicus entry at the dinner table and our whole family cry-laughed including the 11 and 9 year old boys) and the honest words that go straight to my heart. You are a gift.
I own both Furiously Happy and Let’s Pretend this Never Happened as eBooks and was SUPER Excited to find a copy of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened in one of our local Little Free Library.
( I live in a small rural town and didn’t know we had the Little Library until 2 weeks ago)
Hmmm – a bit eclectic but here goes: the Bryant and May detective series by Christopher Fowler, Nice Shootin’ Cowboy short stories by Anson Cameron, the Falco series by Lindsay Davis, anything by Bill Bryson, Douglas Adams, Stephen Fry, Quentin Crisp, Jon Ronson, Frankie Boyle. Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, The Compleet Molesworth Geoffrey Willians (my favourite book growing up – loved the illustrations by Ronald Searle). Most recent reads were Perv by Jesse Bering, Lets Pretend This Never Happened (awww!), American Savage by Dan Savage, Cutest pictorial book Extraordinary Chickens by Stephen Green-Armytage – it goes on……best I stop now. I mostly like humour in my fact and my fiction, I think it makes the world more palatable….spoon full of sugar n’all.
I’ve already pre ordered 2 copies of your new book, because I know I’ll meet people who could use it.
I would absolutely love a copy of your book when it comes out! Must say I agree about loving a book to death. If anyone ever finds my paperback edition of Sylvia Plath’s journals they will have a wealth of dog eared pages and copious notes to content with.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. All the Harry Potter books. The James Herriot series, starting with All Creatures Great and Small. Touch Not the Cat by Mary Stewart. And I hope I’ve earned a book!!
I mostly get books from the library, so I really can’t write in them or abuse them. Well, I could, but then would feel guilty and have to buy a new copy for the library, which would totally ruin the whole point of borrowing them in the first place. However, I did photocopy that wonderful picture of the raccoon riding the terrified cat and hung it up on my wall, Just to remind me to laugh at life and have a good time. Thanks so much for writing that book!!
That was beautiful!
It is a wonderful thing when you come across a book that you cherish so much that you batter it, Every broken spine and creased page is just proof of what books can mean to people, and seeing someone holding a book in such a question just makes me want to ask what book it is because I know that reading it will be an adventure.
After my mother passed, her favorite cookbook passed to me. It’s a thick, black fabric bound 1956 edition from Good Housekeeping, covering everything a young bride needed to know about food shopping, cooking, and setting a lovely table. The “Black Book,” as we called it has crossed the Atlantic (twice), lent its expertise to meals prepared on three continents, and seven or so states. It guided the kitchen educations of five kids, a generation of grandkids and great grandkids. The Black Book’s poor spine is just begging for duct tape.
A third of The Book’s index pages are missing, but no one seems to care — if you’re looking for a favorite recipe, just look for the pages with the most splash marks on them.
Just what my favorite books look like, especially with the cat fang marks on the corner
I see I’m not the first person to mention Helene Hanff! I totally thought of her when I read about your habit of looking through old books for margin notes. 🙂 This post and all those comments made me happy. So nice to have peeps just like me out there, having the same reference point.
Stephen King’s Misery is my favorite book of all time. It’s the first book of his that I read and it was so unlike anything I had ever read before. That book, given to me by my grandmother(!), introduced me to the beauty of a good mind fuck. Something that sits in your brain and just chews away from all different angles until there is nothing left.
Second favorite is We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. It made me afraid of my own children.
Third is the sweet Charlotte’s Web.
I would LOVE to get one of your new books. I have just recently figured out I have anxiety & I deal with depression on & off. Your books have been life jackets for me in the last couple of years.
I have always loved books, and “Little Women” is my first and ever-lasting love. I’ve read it a few times, but in general, I don’t re-read books. There are so many more waiting for me, so I must move on. I used to have a rule that I must finish every book I start. Happily, I’ve thrown that rule out, there’s too little time in this life to read bad books, so now they go to Salvation Army and I consider it a learning experience. After “Little Women,” my faves include “Breakfast of Champions,” by Kurt Vonnegut, “Pride and Prejudice,” “The Kite Runner,” and “Still Life,” by Louise Penny, which introduces you to the life in Three Pines and induces you to read every story thereafter, it’s such a compelling place.
I must have 50 books lurking in various places in my house waiting to be read, but I’m still combing through these comments to take notes on new books or authors I haven’t encountered before. I can’t get through them all in one sitting, so I made a note of the last number and will pick up there when I get back. I love the Bloggess Tribe.
P.S. Please add me to the drawing bucket.
I will always take one of your books. He’ll I will take two. Thanks for making me laugh and feel less alone.
Stephen King’s Rose Madder and also Bag of Bones
Judy Blume’s Tiger Eyes
Rick Bragg’s All Over But the Shoutin’ and Ava’s Man
Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half
And Jenny Lawson’s Let’s Pretend This Never Happened as well as Furiously Happy
Favorite? Hmm. 84 Charing Cross Rd by Helene Hanff. Any Discworld book by Terry Pratchett. (sniff) Wow. Never realized how completely opposite those selections are – except they both reveal a love of the written word.
My most destroyed by far is The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Must be the depression in me. Others are Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, Pride snd Prejudice, and Harry Potter, or any fantasy really, that allows me to escape my mind for a time.
P.S. Oh my gosh, I would LOVE a copy of your new book but I already pre-ordered. However, I only have the audiobook of Furiously Happy and am now devastated to learn from the pic you posted that, omg, there are pictures? I missed Rory’s cowboy riding ways?! I guess I need the paper version too. Shoot! I hope that’s not the case with Let’s Pretend…as well. Stupid audiobooks.
My three most-loved-to-death books (quite literally held together with rubberbands) are The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George, and Love and Pasta; A Recollection by Joseph Vergara.
I would love a copy of your new book! I have so many favorites, but the one I have probably read the most is “The Giver” by Lois Lowry. We read it in 7th grade and there was just something about it that stuck with me. I have reread it nearly every year since then (2 decades or so later).
I still have my very worn down copies of The Little Engine that Could, Danny and the Dinosaur, and A Wrinkle In Time. I also have a worn out copy of my fathers The Last of the Mohicans. It is one of my most prized possessions.
Guards! Guards! – by Terry Pratchett, The Diamond Throne – by David and Leigh Eddings, Tower of Destruction by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson.
These books are worn down, and Tower is actually starting to sweat pages.
King: Bag of Bones, Koontz: Watchers (love, love, love the dog in this book).
I definitely want your new book. I need relief 🙂
My favorites are so childlike compared to others. I love the Little House on the Prairie books – a simpler time. I love A Wrinkle in Time series. All the Black Stallion books. As a young mother I collected as many of the Saddle Club books as I could find. Adulting is frightening to me. I like to slip into childhood and rest without worries.
You all are making me think of some favorites that haven’t been read in a while and need an immediate re-read!
One that is especially battered and loved is “The Little Chapel on the River: A Pub, a Town and the Search for What Matters Most” by Gwendolyn Bounds. She makes you see and feel it ALL.
My 23 year old daughter also has mounds of beloved books and once told me she could not part with any of them because they are her friends. And who would get rid of a friend on purpose?
I couldn’t argue with this logic and so they remain. We may be buried under them someday but there are worse ways to go!
It has never occurred to me that someone would make notes in the margins of a book that wasn’t either a textbook or the Bible. Now I will most definitely be checking the books I find at yard sales, etc much more carefully. I admit I’m probably much more like Victor. I handle my books with kid gloves: I never fold the corners down, rarely crease the spine, never lay an open book face down, etc. But I do this simply because I love my books so much. The first novel I ever owned was Little Women. My parents always would take us shopping on our birthdays and allowed us to choose whatever we wanted up to a strict predetermined dollar amount. On my 9th birthday I discovered Louisa May Alcott and her lovely March sisters. It took me all summer to read it, but I absolutely adored it. I still have that book. And it is perhaps that very book that influenced how I would treat every other book that came into my life. Love them, care for them, and they last forever with the comforting strength of a hard cover, the soft swoosh sound the pages make as you turn them, and that intoxicating smell that even beats the smell of my Mom’s homemade oatmeal cookies.
Other go-to favorites include: Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, the Harry Potter series, and pretty much anything by Sidney Sheldon.
Oh, and pretty please enter me into the drawing for your new book! (Drawing. Lol! Ok, I’m a total nerd.)
This is why I love secondhand books. I wish I could read like you do, filling the book up with love as you wear it down; but there’s too much Victor in me. I tend to note-take onto paper, or photocopy bits.
PS, the title of this reminded me of one of my very favourite books ever: The Velveteen Rabbit. I reread that regularly. It’s the best, even if it is a picture book.
Whooops, forgot to say, I would love a copy of your newest book. I’m planning to buy it when I can if I don’t win it, but I can always hope, right? 😀
(weepy) This we have in common.
I remember the other day there was a spider in my living room. We heard it gallumping around long before we could actually see it. It made a dash for safety under our sofa, foolishly revealing its postion. Did I keep it together? Decidedly not. I was jumping around like a headless chicken screaming for my husband to kill it. Panic ensued. I made him lift the sofa up on its end so I could locate and destroy the interloper. Having located our intruder I grabbed the nearest heavy object I could find – a recently borrowed book from the library (handily covered with a lovely protective layer of plastic) – and casually, so as not to arouse the spiders suspicion, dropped it on him. Then I stepped on the book, you know, just to be sure it definitely got him. Maybe I even gave it a bit of a twist to be doubly sure.
Would I have done it with one of my own books, something I had paid good money for, something without plastic covering it?
Without hesitation, yes.
Books really are marvelous things 😀
I do this also – and my husband is like Victor, and shudders at the broken spines and dog-eared pages. One of my best-loved books is Fool On The Hill by Matt Ruff. I highly recommend it. And I’d love a copy of your new book 🙂
I would love a copy of your newest book! I have so many that I have re-read. Memoirs of a Geisha, I read a half dozen times. And I have a copy of The Lorax that my godmother bought me for my 18th birthday. She passed away a few years ago and reading that book to my kids makes me feel closer to her. The pages are still together, but they fell out of the cover.
It would be great to get a copy of your new book! Thank you for doing this!
YOU ARE FURIOUSLY AMAZING!!! LOVE YOU AND YOUR BOOKS.. pick me.. <3
I have a few, but my go to book is The Midnight Club by Christopher Pike. It’s written for teens, so I’ve given copies to my friends’ children over the years. My own copy has been read repeatedly. In fact, it’s time I read it again.
I’m the same way with books. Fold corners, crease spines, tuck in anything and everything to bookmark.
If I get chosen for a copy, drop it off at the waiting room of a local children’s hospital oncology department, or palliative care center, or something, okay? I get depressed, but I’d rather it go where a little extra support is needed.
I am sort of like Victor and my wife and son are like you. I got a signed copy of The Fault in Our Stars in hardback, but I bought it in paperback so my family can read it. A couple of my favorites are Stephenson’s Snow Crash, King’s The Stand and Varley’s Gaea Trilogy (to name a few). Would love a copy of the new book when it comes out, but will buy it anyway.
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay–read it so much groups of pages fell out. Little Women, had a beautiful old illustrated copy whenever I pick it up I end up re-reading the whole book, definitely showing its age. Bridget Jones’ Diary because it still makes me laugh out loud.
I love this! My husband has a ton of comics and figurines that he’s kept in the case in his closet. He doesn’t use them or play with them (thought that might creep me out so I guess good job on that one!). I dog ear everything because though bookmarks are sometimes cool and I do get them frequently for Christmas or the like, I also lose them just as frequently and when you are reading at 3 in the morning you don’t want to search for a bookmark you want to put the book down and hope just by doing that you aren’t going to get a second wind. I truly adore what you said because not only does it show how much you love your things, but how much you use them! Too many of us put far too much value in stuff we rarely use and lose sight of what is important. Thanks again for all of your inspiration!
Mae
Looks like the Rorys got a hold of that one.
“Room” “A Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Princess Bride” are all books that I’ve loved, reread a million times, given away to friends, and then bought again to replace them. My childhood set of “Little House on the Prairie” were the first books that I had to tape the cover back on.
I would like a copy of the new book, but wouldn’t buy it for myself.
Favorites: Almost anything by Robin McKinley. “I Capture the Castle” by Dodie Smith.
I am the same. I LOVE my old, worn, loved books.
IT by Stephen King. The Kingkiller Chronicles by Pat Rothfuss. The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Stardust by Neil Gaiman.
All of my Kage Baker books, all of my Christopher Moore books, all of my Jack Vance books. These are the ones I reread every few months cuz they are just so good.
Wind in the Willows, Lord of the Rings. The Silmarillion, Island of the Mighty (and the others in the series) , Lyonnesse, The Green Pearl and Madouc,- These are the ones I cherish because I read them aloud to my children over many, many bedtimes
There are so many others especially the Gaiman books, but other friends here have mentioned many of them…
My all-time, ever favorite is my Hitchhikers Guide “Trilogy” by Douglas Adams. I was given a leather-bound copy containing the first FOUR books, before he wrote the 5th in “The increasingly inaccurately titled ‘Hitchhikers Trilogy'” (His words). It has many underlined sections, paint splotches on the outside cover, and is lovingly inscribed by my parents with the date they gave it to me… even though they cannot understand why I love it. (“It’s so weird”)
I intend to get “You Are Here”, but cannot pre-order because we are moving to China soon and I have no idea of the address yet. (This whole move is an incredibly scary and difficult process.) Your books have helped me a lot. Not everyone “gets it”. I would love to get a free one, and will still get at least a few more, as gifts and “re-do” coloring/journaling. So I understand if you select someone with greater need, who simply cannot afford it.
Of course, your two books. My most loved read of all time is Pat Conroy’s Beach Music. It is epic and I have read it over and over. The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit. Terry Pratchett’s disc world series. All of Terry Prachett actually.
The Chronicles of Narnia and all of Roald Dahl’s children’s book were the first things that spoke to my soul, but many since: Succulent Wild Woman by Sark, Beach Music by Pat Conroy, The Red Tent, all the Harry Potter Books (obvi).
I agree with you, it’s like the worn out teddy bear you find in your mom’s attic. Missing button eye, shredded bow, stuffing coming out of a seam. You know it was enjoyed, loved, cherished. Just like the books with their coffee cup rings, folded pages, pencil marks, and puppy teeth marks.
Books I love:
Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard by Eleanor Farjeon
The Fairyland series by Cat Valente
I would love one. I have already pre-ordered the book, but I have a lot of people I would like to gift this to.
My current favorite is The Time Traveler’s Wife, and it has coffee and bathwater stains. I purchase used copies of it whenever I can so that I can loan it to friends who haven’t read it yet without having to worry that they won’t return it. Also, I want to have them on hand when my daughters are old enough to read them. Plus, I’ve listened to the audiobook of it several times. I’m sure if I had Furiously Happy or Pretend This Never Happened in print, they’d be ruined, too… But I love to listen to your books in your actual voice. 🙂
James Herriott’s All Creatures Great and Small is my comfort book. It’s been to NZ with me (where it lost its cover), through every move and now resides on my night stand.
My most dog-eared random slip of paper bookmarked book is a collection of poetry of Mary Oliver. (My husband is in the Victor camp and would be horrified.) But there is always something in there for whatever I’m going through. Also Traveling Mercies by Ann Lamott and Here if you Need Me by Kate Braestrup. Though I must agree with the Harry Potter folks- just re-read the whole series. And anything that has chubacabra references (smile). That one has been read several times, particularly aloud so we can both laugh.
Oh, Jenny L. I could not love this post more! My son’s room and the back of my car are filled with dog-eared books he loves. Some missing a cover–others half the first chapter. I think of it as a high honor to be raising a boy who knows the turn of a page. A few of my faves: Mary Oliver’s poetry, like Kate who commented above me. Siddhartha was a life changer. The Book Thief. And Peace Like a River. Love that you helped us all generate such a wonderful list!
A well-loved book is the best kind. My husband is like Victor – almost delicate with it. But I want my books to be lived in. Thanks for reminding me to love the hell out of something new this week 🙂
Anything by Elswyth Thane, the Cheerleader series by Ruth Doan MacDougall, the Betsy-Tacy and Beany Malone books and all of my beloved “malt shop” teen books from the 1950s
Biting the Sun, buy Tanith Lee. It’s weird, and fascinating, and I re-read it at least once a year. I love reading so much I would probably be the guy in the Twilight Zone about it, except I don’t have glasses, and everything would work out perfectly! 🙂
Brandon Sanderson’s the Way of Kings, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, and Carrie Bebris’s Pool of Radiance (which literally reads like a bad dungeonsituations and dragons campaign and I love it so much) are my favorites.
I love, love, LOVE my Kindle, but I can’t write in it – this is a big drawback! Even if I add an ebook to the Kindle, I still keep the dead-tree version. I need the solidity of my books around me! I would LOVE to get a copy of your new book! squeeee!
I once asked Tim Powers to autograph my copy of The Stress of Her Regard. He gave me a hug because the book was so tattered and obviously read over and over again. As a hopeful author, I would love that myself, but so far I only have ebooks out. Kinda hard to fold ebooks.
I treasure my books but don’t get upset if something happens while reading them myself. However, if I lend a book to you and you do anything to it there will be hell to pay. In fact I’ve had too many bad experiences that I don’t lend out books any more. But my copies of Anne of Green Gables, Emma and the Little Prince are held together by tape and love.
my cook book i wrote for my son “Ya Mamma’s cookbook” i wrote it for him as a gift from me when he leaves home. He will have a copy of all his favourite recipes to cook for himself and pass on in future. Has flour and cooking marks all over it. And by far ..The honest truth by Dan Gemeinhart a book my son and i would read together and laugh and cry through while i was in recovery from breast cancer. My sons first book he cried while reading and healed when finished. He has read your books with me also and now got him teacher reading them.
I have a tattered paperback copy of S.K.’s “It”. My sister gave it to me 31 years ago. I was only 15 and hadn’t read any Stephen King before. I was hooked after that. Now when I see balloons tied to a mailbox, I don’t think “party”, I think “We all float down here.” 😉
Looking forward to the new book! I hope it will come out in Australia!
P & P (Austen), trite but true, and I loved P & P & Z equally!
As to the random book winner..me, me, oh please me?!
I’m with Victor. It hurts me to crack a book spine. I love the pristine feeling of a fresh book and want to have it over and over. Many of my favorite books are by Pat Conroy
I feel I need to tell you that August 10 (besides being my b’day) is National Lazy Day. Just in case you feel the need to veg for a day.
Ive learned to buy my books from church booksales and the salvation army. if I love a book I kill it (hel-LO Jenny) and since many of my favorite books are actually series, after a few years of dragging these things around they tend to get a bit tatty. Terry Pratchet, the Discworld series, and I read it in order, as if it were one humungous book. 35 really huge chapters.
Robert Parker, “Spenser” the whole series. Some near the end get to be a bit too cute and coy, but I figger, a good series deserves a full reading. Sorta like a marriage. You take the good and the bad.
Neil Gaiman Neverwhere
Lord of the Rings .
The Lucia Books
And there are some books that strangely enough, are so good, and stay with me so strongly I may never need to read them again. But I keep the books as a reminder.
yaasss i want one!!
I love this post so much!! Praise books!! <3 A copy of your book would be the cat’s meow in my day >^.^<
My daughter and I are both avid readers, but I am like you, and she is like Victor. She HAS to have them new, and I need them pre-loved. We were having a heated discussion just yesterday about why we were each right, and the other wrong. I will love the fuck out your book if you send me one, but I’ll let her have a go at it first.
My two favorite books are definitely Tigerheart by Peter David and Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. Those two stories have stuck with me over the last few years.
As long as you do it to personal copies and not library books (you should see the state of some books we get back from people, sheese!), you can love them as roughly as you want. I had to stop loaning my mother books because she’s a spine breaker and then all the pages fall out.
I love Southern a Discomfort by Rita Mae Brown, any of the Flavia deLuce books and The English Patient by Michael Onidatje. ❤️
All the Narnia and Tolkien books. Stardust. The Collected Poems of T.S. Eliot. And W.B. Yeats too. Crossing to Safety. Gaudy Night. And many many more. And yes, you can tell if I’ve read a book 😉 (And I’d love to be entered the drawing for a copy of your latest, please)
I am desperate to reach out to you on a personal level but of course you have countless followers at this point after your selfless tale of your lovely, scary, “fascinating”, addicting, hilariously horrifying recounting of your life thus far. I just want want to thank you, as I know many have. But I have one pressing question…. How do you read all the endless responses from people who can relate on some level?? Isn’t it overwhelming? Like right now, I want to tell all my personal shit so I can only imagine, well actually I can’t imagine, how many others like me want to share their stories, only to collaborate and ultimately become your best friend, thereby making you the shrink of the “fuck up ones” out there reading your words as we are either giggling or crying?
So I’m new to this, and unlike Facebook I can’t edit my last comment. (Note to self) But I wanted to say I really appreciate your free therapy sessions…. Very giving of you.
The Help, A Fine Balance, and I especially love and relate to historical fiction and nonfiction about the Holocaust.
I really enjoyed this post. I’m in between I guess. I don’t keep books pristine but neither do I tear them apart. Would LOVE to get a free copy of your book.
Yes!! Maybe that’s why I’ve never really been able to get into reading digital books/kindles etc….
I would LOVE to get a copy of your new book!l
My books get a thorough loving. Loving, tho rough! Ha! I’ve been embarrassed by the state of my books, too. I’ve bought new copies of countless books to loan to book lovers like Victor, who don’t seem to get wine drips and cheesy fingers on their own books. I look forward to reading, staining, smearing, and coloring the newest one!
I would love your new book!
If I get a copy I’ll promise to send a completed picture to victor with a singing delivery guy who says “knock knock motherfucker”
Favorite? Tough question. I think it is hard to beat Gilead by Robinson. What I write in books is soooo important to me. It is a record of how I experienced the book, what it provoked in me.
An ex-friend broke me a little and made it so that I feel like it’s wrong to color in coloring books. But I would still love a copy of yours to flip through and look at.
The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan
Shadows of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson (not just flattering you here. I’ve read it so many times that I could probably recite it from memory).
Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
And hell yes, I would love a free coloring book!!
My copy of The Lord of the Rings, which I got when I was nine, still has its cover but you can’t actually see what’s on it for creases. My mum can beat that, though: her “reading copy” of LOTR had no cover and was broken in two midway through a chapter. She kept it in the airing cupboard- I think it went in there to dry out a coffee stain originally.
Would you send a book to me in Canada?
Our PG Wodehouse books are probably the best/hardest loved books my husband and I own. We read them during daylight hours too but they are what we turn to if we wake in the night with the adrenaline surge and the thought that there might be a killer in the neighborhood. They are the best form of alternate reality — gentle and absurd and grounding.
Shiloh, by Phillis Reynolds Naylor (the impressionist-looking painting of a boy and his dog on the cover, not the new-age looking BS to tempt kids nowadays). But I should note that most of the books I really like, I give to friends to read and then pass along. I imagine they become well-loved and tattered, held by all kinds of different sets of hands (the books, not the friends!), on a very long quest to be enjoyed by as many people as possible. This is why I am probably the only person that gets annoyed when people try to return ‘lent’ books to me.
Oh I love this post. I tend to be fussy with my books. When I was younger, they tended to get shredded by pets/cars/washing machines, so I started keeping them pristine to a fault (my allowance as a kid only went to far). I guess that habit stuck with me.
Books that feel like home include:
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
House of Leaves by Mark Danielwski
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’engle (that one actually fell apart)
I only just read them but I have the feeling Night FIlm by Marisha Pessl, Smile by Raina Telgemeier, and Hyperion by Dan Simmons will become some of these books.
‘Fool on the Hill’ by Matt Ruff and ‘No Flying in the House’ by Betty Brock. I have extra copies of each that I pass around to friends.
I cannot wait for your new book! I would love an extra copy, so I can doodle & share in 1 & hang up pictures out of the other. I love your emoted drawings. They get me. YOU get me.
love you.
I just read Furiously Happy, in one night. I couldn’t put it down, alternating between laughing and crying. Thanks for publicly talking about depression and anxiety. And for taking back “crazy”, if I’m stuck revisiting the hospital every couple years, I want the right to make crazy jokes.
To Kill a Mockingbird, Franny and Zooey, Tiny Beautiful Things
So far: The Witching Hour by Anne Rice (which I am on my second copy of because the first fell apart so bad I couldn’t handle it anymore), and Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Those are the two that show the love for sure, though there are others that are loved equally, but have been moved to rereading digitally.
I would love to add the colouring book to my collection of colouring books though. My daughter loves the pics she’s seen.
I talk to my books in the margins, in pencil only. Cracking the spine of a book and dog earring the pages makes me twitchy though. However, I have friends that love to read the books I’ve annotated because it is like reading with a friend. I also like reading a book that someone else has annotated.
I fall somewhere in between “destroy this book with love!” and “no! stay pristine precious tome.” My textbooks from college (yes I still have them even though I’ve graduated) have notes all over, sticky tabs coming out like porcupine spikes, and possibly mustaches on some of the photos. (I studied Latin, Cicero needed a mustache to help his personality.) The novels I’ve read a thousand times are battered and torn and broken. But some books are too precious to me to do more than occasionally gently open, read the notes people I’ve lost wrote on the inside, and then set back on the shelf.
“If You Want To Write” by Brenda Ueland. You MUST, MUST, MUST read this book, Jenny. I think you and she would have been good friends.
I plan to get two copies of your coloring book: one to get autographed and kept safe, and one to love to death.
My copy of A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving looks like it has been through the war. My other favorite- The Kindness of Strangers by Katrina Kittle -is perpetually looking new because I keep giving my copies away and buying myself new ones because it is THAT important to me that people read it.
Books that are a part of me: Mandy, by Julie Andrews. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. The Ordinary Princess. Marjorie Morningstar. (See a trend?) War and Remembrance. Circle of Friends.
Ah, yes, that certain je ne sais quoi of printed books. The tactile things you don’t have reading an ebook. I highlighted lots of stuff in Furiously Happy after borrowing the Kindle version from the library. I will still have the parts I loved available while my friend, who borrowed the hardcover from the same library, will only have her memories. Love your writing and your books!!
YES. I actually wrote a blog post a while book about all the books I’ve torn apart (with love). Some of my all time favorites are just sad battered remnants of their former selves. My husband just re-read our copy of The Giver only to realize that there are about 50 pages missing in the middle of the book. Whoops. He was NOT happy.
I Wish I had a Red Dress by Pearl Cleage literally saved my life. Well, maybe not literally, it’s not like I was drowning in an actual ocean and it was written on an actual floatation device. But, it is exactly like I was drowning in a metaphorical ocean and it was my metaphorical floatation device. I also love The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy, and re-read it every few years as a reminder of the many horrible ways people find to hurt each other and the magical ways we can heal each other and ourselves.
I love old books. I bought an old classic copy of Winnie the Pooh for a friend (and still regret not keeping it!). Some books, like WtP, are lost on small children. I had no idea what wisdom was contained in that book…(see the Zen of Pooh).
And my copy of Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison is an old tattered paperbook. But I will never get rid of it!
I would love to have a copy of your new book. But in the event I am not selected for a free one I will make my sister buy it for me. She started this whole thing by sending me Furiously Happy. So I think she now must continue to feed my need. Right?
My copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a paperback which was owned by my grandfather and has a color photo on the cover of Atticus and Scout watching over Jem with his broken arm. I’ve never seen another copy like it and I nearly read it to death. It is one of my treasures.
I love this so much, Jenny! I’ve always treasured used books–well loved and full of comments, and if I feel moved to comment in the margins, myself, then I know the author has really touched me. Thank you for the validation!
My favorite book of all time is East of Eden. It’s been awhile since I read it (again) so I think it’s time to bring it out go over it one more time. My other fave…A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving. I was wowed by that book. It made me think about faith and friendship and belief and and and so much more. It made me laugh, remember, yearn, and cry. What more could you ask for in a good read. I have two copies, just in case one gets lost, stolen or used as kindling. I’m prepared for the zombie apocolypse, yo.
I would love a copy of your book. But I have to admit that I am in the Victor camp in regards to book treatment. But I get most of my books from the library and have to treat them nice or I would be blacklisted and not have any books at all, a fate worse than potty training a toddler. I am reading “night film” right now. It’s very creepy, but it drags you in and doesn’t let go.
Hi again, Jenny. You inspired me to write about writing in the margins! Thank you!
Vaguely embarrassed to admit but – The Bride by Julie Garwood. the first romance novel I bought and shared with my friends. 🙂 it’s beaten half to death at this point. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (on my second copy because I melted the spine of my first in the sun), basically all my Neil Gaiman books. And you can tell the cookbooks I love best because they’ve been spilled on, damaged, splashed with oil and in one case slightly scorched.
I’m a little late to the party, but we were out of town. I took my son home to Chicago (my home, not his; he was born here in Texas). I’m another one who loved her copy of The Secret Garden to pieces. I may still have at least half of that book somewhere.
My mom bought it for me when I was seven or eight and when I finished it, I told her that I hadn’t wanted it to end. She said that I could read it again and then I was silent for a long time. She hadn’t actually meant that I could read it again right away, but that’s what I did; I describe The Secret Garden as being the book that made me a reader.
Currently reading Furiously Happy, and it has definitely been helping to drag me through a rough patch, so I can’t tell you how much I love you and your crazy mind for that. I haven’t read many books more than once (not all the way through at least) but Anne Lammot’s “Bird by Bird” was a wonderfully written guide on writing and life, as it suggests. She gets so much deeper than “this is what it is to be a writer”, and delves into “this is what it’s like to be a beautiful, broken, wholly untamed human being.”
And that to me is about the most beautiful message there is…
My daughter is just like Victor with her books. She will be -0 next week & an avid reader. She takes such special care of her books, they all look brand new. Me on the other hand love to have a book that feels ‘used’. My daughter is constantly on my case for folding my pages in to save my place. A thick book mark?! Forget it! She thinks I’ll ruin the binding:)
Thank you for the blog AND for your books! I enjoy hearing that we all have our daily struggles in this crazy thing called life.
My daughter is just like Victor with her books. She will be 10 next week & an avid reader. She takes such special care of her books, they all look brand new. Me on the other hand love to have a book that feels ‘used’. My daughter is constantly on my case for folding my pages in to save my place. A thick book mark?! Forget it! She thinks I’ll ruin the binding:)
Thank you for the blog AND for your books! I enjoy hearing that we all have our daily struggles in this crazy thing called life.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon, and The Giver by Lois Lowry.
My husband calls me a book terrorist because of the way I wear my books out 🙂
Agreed. Books should be read, and re-read, and shared. My copy of To Kill a Mockingbird is literally falling apart.
OMG OMG OMG! I got all weepy when I saw you too love Alice in Wonderland & what she found there. I’m fixated on all things wonderland although her life & times have zero to do with me, other than that I too live in a world of nonsense & wonder. I can never explain that to a single soul, but you I think understand. Thank you. And don’t even get me started on The Once and Future King…
I am SO looking forward to your new book!
My childhood copies of the Laura Ingalls Wilder series are well-worn, and I’ve just finished reading a borrowed copy of Madeleine L’Engle’s The Summer of the Great-Grandmother — its owner had written in the margins and it made me reading of it all the richer.
I just finished a lovely book called Come, Thou Tortoise By Jessica Grant. I think you’d love it. It’s beautifully written, both in content and style. It’s my newest favourite.
I have never bought an E-book. I grew up in bookstores and libraries and I love the smell of old books and new books. I need to feel the weight of it in my hands and be able to stuff it in my backpack or my carry-on I also buy multiple copies of my favorite books and hand them out to those in my life that I think will benefit from them the most. I have done this with several copies of your books. Thank you for that. I also know that paper will at last digital media, hard drives flash drives and Technology
I agree, a worn out book is a beloved book. I work at a used bookstore and one of my favorite jobs is checking in books. By checking in books you go through the book pages to see if there are any torn or missing pages and through this process you get to read people sides notes. Some of these notes are funny, some make you questions the previous owner of the book and some of them comes with personal reviews of the book like: ” dont read this book” ! ” dont read page 45″ ” this book change my life”
I love your book and I read it out loud to my family and I write my side notes on it for the next reader to read.
Would love to have a copy of your new book.
I was always a slow reader, but after catching hell in 3rd grade for being what the teacher referred to as being”so careless” with a book (i left it in the playground), I stopped reading for a long time.
One of my favorite books is The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas.
I agree with you about buying books at estate sales.
I have Copy of Winter Count that i found when i was fourteen years old and a signed copy of Bean Trees that my sister one decided not to borrow because she wanted to read Barbara Kingsolver without trying to figure out why I marked this or that. I just inherited my Grandmother’s collection of librettos, I’m worried she is going to be pretty ticked st me when I’ve had my way La Boehme.
Random should be my middle name
My beautifu,l kind, friend, was just diagnosed with bipolar disorder, your books keep me going on a daily basis and now I am passing them along to help her on those rough days we’d like to fast forward through…thank you Jenny Lawson, for giving us hope and laughter.
My beautiful, kind, friend, was just diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Your books keep me going on a daily basis. I am passing them along to my friend, I hope your books and blog help her on those rough days we’d like to fast forward through…thank you Jenny Lawson, for giving us hope and laughter.
Thank you for this. Books, the old-style books made of paper glue cloth thread and sometimes leather, were magical physical portals to me until I got immersed in work and forgot. Thank you for reminding me about this and the ghosts of past readers who live on between the covers of used books. Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, A Wrinkle In Time by L’Engle (although better first read as a child than as a hyper-critical adult), any textbook on medieval history if it’s accompanied by an amazing teacher.
This is why ebooks will never replace physical books.
My favorite book is my copy of The Hobbit. It was my mother’s copy from high school in the 1960’s and now lives in my home. It fostered a life long love of reading and is probably the only thing my mother and I have in common. I only read it once a year now in an attempt to preserve it for when my daughter is old enough to read it.
Loved your first two books and am eagerly awaiting the next! All of my friends that have passed around my copies think you are hilarious! Thanks, Jenny, for making us laugh.
My cookbooks are like that. I write in them, and put sticky notes in them. You can find my favorite recipes by just letting the book fall open. Voila! Fave waffle recipe, fave blueberry muffin recipe, fave bread recipe, etc. Of course all the faves are baked goodies.
The book that made me feel the hardest: Til We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis. It’s a retelling of the story of Cupid and Psyche from Greek mythology, in the voice of Psyche’s older ugly sister (important because Psyche was the most beautiful woman to ever live, which is why a god was in love with her). It makes you examine how you treat the people you love, in a beautiful way.
Talking about it makes me want to read it again…
I would love a copy. I love how you say things I think, or sometimes wish I think. 🙂
My 14-year-old daughter is a hardcover book snob so she is my Victor. She cringes at my well worn, underlined favorites but she reads about two books a week so how can I argue who is a better book lover?
I LOVE a real book. I collect them and, though I “try” to keep them looking like new, they are often looking a little worse for wear. But this post is great, because you’ve inspired me to write in the margins and highlight stuff that’s meaningful to me – just so someone, one day may read it and see what mattered to the reader (in this case, me). What a wonderful idea. <3
I would love a copy. I have both of your other books and love them.
Julie
Jenny! I have recently discovered your work and while it is through audiobook and in electronic form, I can promise that your words are being as well loved as the Furiously Happy cover you just showed. I would be honored to receive a copy. Hugs!
I LOVE a fresh new book. After I’ve read it, I’ll loan it to my friend who is a little rough with her books but our lively discussions afterwards make up for it.
The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley. It has been my favorite book since 5th grade.
Where the Red Fern Grows, because who doesn’t love to SOB HYSTERICALLY at the death of childhood pets?
Furiously Happy is one of these books for me. Thank you so much for your writing. After many years of fighting through depression, anxiety and panic attacks, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder a few weeks ago with potential borderline personality disorder for extra seasoning. It has been a pretty shit time to be honest – but your writing has made me laugh on the subway every single day and made me feel like living (and thriving) with my mental illness is totally doable. I cannot thank you enough Jenny – you’ve been a guardian angel in book form without even knowing it! Pretty impressive.
I think that I am somewhere between you and your husband. I love my books and read them everywhere! I don’t love them to death though. I rough them up a bit but put them lovingly back on their shelves to recuperate! My favorite books are , everything by Jayne Ann Krentz, The Wind in The Willows by Grahaeme Green, and Sherlock Holmes! I must admit though that my hard cover copy of Sherlock Holmes did lose it’s cover and sustain a ripped spine but I swear I don’t know how that happened!
Neil Gaiman’s Death series in comic book form is in wrapped plastic too…but I’m thinking, Screw that, it’s time for my 15 year old to read them. The Witching Hour by Anne Rice…I have a first edition that stays put, but a paperback that has been all over.
I LOVE this post! I’m a bookaholic and have them lying everywhere, bookshelves, on the floor next to the bookshelves, next to the bed, bathroom, I always always have a car book to read at any given time. I too love the Sandman series (still trying to find all the comics), the Great Gatsby is my most read and beat up and IT by Stephen King terrifies me regularly. Oh and yes I want a copy of the new book!
I am also Victor. I DON’T bend spines or pages, and I’m one of those weirdos who will tilt the book and very gently spread the pages so I can read the text closest to the spine. Originally I started doing that so I would have a beautiful library, but then I moved one day and picked up a box that was too heavy for me (my friends who were supposed to help me, stayed up all night instead and never showed) and ended up causing 2 slipped discs in my back and couldn’t work for 3 months. So, then I decided once I actually purchased a house (some day), that’s when I’d start keeping my books. Now, I only have 3 or 4 books that inspire me that go everywhere with me, and though I hate hardcovers, all of them are indeed, hardcover, and the rest go back to bookstores. Unbroken spines and pages make for great book store credit value 🙂
Jenny I just picked up Furiously Happy and it’s the first book I have been able to read in a long time. I used to be a voracious reader but depression hit hard the past two years and I found that I just couldn’t read for very long anymore. Even favorites couldn’t keep my interest. I haven’t finished your book yet but I’ve only two chapters left. I have laughed out loud in waiting rooms because of you. Thank you. Thank you so much!
I have never commented. But have you ever had a day/night/week that made you feel all crumbly inside? That’s when I grab MY book and love on it. Fold the cover back, smell the less than white pages, and return to a place where I am comfortable. Where I know EXACTLY what will happen on the next page (because sometimes I NEED to not be surprised). My GF has lovingly given me a new “wooby”…but it sits on a shelf, waiting. She doesn’t understand my love for this particular book, or why I can read it over and over again.
Thank you for this post. I knew I wasn’t alone, but I feel like you were in my head (and I don’t wish that on anyone!)
My first book love was Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Patterson. And The Judy Blume. Her whole catalogue but specifically Are You Ther God… And Superfudge.
Now I am more of an audiobook listener. I’ve listened to both LPTNH and FH multiple times. But my favorites are the Jane Jameson/ Half Moon Hollow books by Molly Harper narrated my Amanda Ronconi. They are paranormal chick lit/ cozy mystery and romance mash ups. The characters are sarcastic and funny and the narration just makes it seem like I would be best friends with them. They are like a warm blanket or ‘comfort food’ for my soul. I’ve listened to them each repeatedly, with book marks of my favorite quotes notated. It doesn’t matter that i can quote some of the book along with the narrator.
My tattered book: Sherlock Holmes. Half a cover, all the pages are curled, and a super beat up spine so the 4″ thick paperback now actually lies flat open.
And of course I would love a copy of the new book… just sad I have to wait until March to buy it or win one from you!
If you haven’t already picked your random selections I would LOVE a copy 🙂
Hi Jenny-I would love to have a copy of your new book!
A bit late to the party but… Different Seasons by Stephen King. The cover is torn and held on with tape. It’s all creased. There are actual paper clips in the book at a couple of favourite parts and I won’t ever take them out now. My mother had written her name in the book because I guess it was her book but I took liquid paper and whited out her name and wrote mine and then “THIS IS MINE” and 1988, so apparently I read the book when I was 11.
I have other books that I love but this particular book… I can’t even explain it but it has had an influence on me and I take it out every few years and I reread The Body (which is the story that has the paper clips) and I think, holy shit, this story is incredible, every single time.
You’re amazing. That is all.
I just finished Furiously Happy and I loved it so much I’ve already talked 2 other people into buying it. I have the audiobook and have already replayed certain parts so many times that I can say them right along with you. I love your book and can’t wait to read another one (or listen to it rather) I will say that I love tangible books that I can read and yours is the only audiobook I have been able to listen to because I usually prefer reading. With your book, I can’t imagine getting any more enjoyment out of it than I did on listening to you reading it to me. One of my friends has the hard copy but I think yours may be the one book that is just better to hear than see. Thanks.
I use everything from old receipts to gum wrappers to mark my place, drives hubs crazy…but it can be interesting to see what we were paying for gas five years ago….
I’m in love with the Count of Monte Cristo! Somewhere deep down it seems wrong to love a book abou revenge and prison but it’s been a favorite for years and years. Dog eared and all. I love it so much that I rail against all the terrible movies that have been made out of it. A good book can’t be a good movie. Perhaps a movie can be shaped by a book. But I hate being disappointed by the theaters. My imagination + a good book any day
I’m the same way! My favorites are read over and over. Why not dog-ear? I’m not planning on parting with it. Why not make notes? It is MINE! I will love it how I want to!
I have always and will always adore A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. My copy looks terrible and I’ve started reading it to my daughter.
Geek Love — old, but still startling.
Transatlantic, Colum McCann
Blood Meridian, just holy shit.
When I was younger I would circle words I didn’t understand so I could look them up, or simply underline passages that I loved. I don’t do it quite as often now, but occasionally I’ll mark something that sticks out. I also try my best NOT to break the spines of books, but…it happens.
I’d love to have a book that’s MEANT to be drawn and written in!
I love love love A Prayer For Owen Meany. That poor book is beat to shit.
Both my hard cover and soft cover versions of Lord of the Rings are battered. And my 30 year old copy of Watership Down finally just totally fell apart. The hubby got me another copy for Christmas. Should get me through the next 30 years!
I totally agree! I am a voracious reader, minimum a book a day but I go to the LIBRARY! If I absolutely love a book I will buy it so I can have my own copy to do with what I may but I have learned to be respectful of borrowed books. If a library book looks beat up, that one is for me!
I know this isn’t a meaningful book in the same sense as yours, but the book I’ve destroyed with love is called That Dark and Bloody River, by Allan Eckert. My grandpa loaned me his copy because he thought I’d enjoy it as much as he did, but he died before I could finish & return it. I carried that book around with me until my hand had worn through the hard cover.
I just learned about your blog and books on the way to work this morning and have already fallen in love with your writing. I feel like I have finally found someone who “gets” me…I have bipolar disorder and one of the coping skills I have (along with finally finding the right medication cocktail) is humor…
Arthur C. Clarke’s “Childhood’s End”, Heinlein’s “Door Into Summer” and Elizabeth Moon’s “Speed of Dark” and “Deed of Paksenarion” – all with broken spines, smudged pages, etc. Do notes/comments attached to ebooks count?
If you’re ever in Ojai California, don’t miss Bart’s Books “The World’s Greatest Outdoor Bookstore” (http://www.bartsbooksojai.com)
I LOVE how far I had to scroll to leave a comment. And I’d love a copy of your new book. I hope to mutilate it properly.
I have conversations with author in the margins; ask them questions, argue, share my thoughts, sympathize, laugh (haha),…
Favorite books? Furiously Happy, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, plus too many to list.
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is one of my all time favorite books and I have multiple worn copies to prove it! The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, and Paper Towns by John Green are some other books that have profoundly impacted me over the years. I have my own worn copies, and often come across copies in used books stores… which I immediately buy to give as gifts to friends.
I have 3 full set copies of The Lord of the Rings –one tattered paperback, one regular hard cover version and one gorgeous set that was given to me as a bday gift that is beautifully bound in dark greens and reds with gold emboss on the edges of the pages. I love that copy but have only read them once. Usually I lovingly trash books but that set, I’m keeping it pristine.
Also, Watership Down by Richard Adams.
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith. Why? Because it’s a beautifully told story about innocence, determination, forgiveness, being thankful for the little things, unconditional love, perseverance, survival, and lots of other things that we need to get through life. I have a tattoo of the Tree of Heaven (explained in the book) as a tribute to my dad who loved to share his favorite books with me. This was our mutual favorite. Damn I miss him.
Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore. Why? Because it’s FUCKING HYSTERICAL! I’ve had to repurchase this book 3 times now because I keep loaning it out and never get it back. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have given it back either.
I’m a mixed bag in terms of my treatment of books. I love getting well used books from sales and such but have a hard time writing/making notations/breaking spines myself. For some reason, when I see the results of others’ love of a book, it makes me happy but I feel like I would be ruining the book to do any of those things myself. This is also probably why I have a shelf of pretty journals that are empty. I didn’t want to “ruin” them by writing in them. In reading through all of these comments, I read about Wreck This Journal and have already ordered it. I’ll give that a shot.
As I have been reading through all of the comments, I have put a bunch of books on my Amazon Wishlist and have put a bunch on hold at the library. We were always big readers in my family growing up and my husband and son are avid readers as well. My mom used to faintly write her initials on top of page 19 of books so she would know if she had read it before. I miss her so much and love seeing her initials!
Some of my favorites…
Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky
Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd
Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
The Help – Kathryn Stockett
The Fault in Our Stars – John Green
Running with Scissors – Augusten Burroughs
Harry Potter Series – J.K. Rowling
Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis
Nightingale – Kristin Hannah
The Light Between Oceans – M.L. Stedman
All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
Where the Red Fern Grows – Wilson Rawls (I will always and forever remember reading this book with my then 8 year old son and both of us sobbing at the ending. I had never read the book and was ill prepared for the ending. It helped reinforce for me that we were raising a sweet, loving, compassionate boy)
Almost all books by Jodi Picoult
Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum books for when mindless comedy is required. Those are a total guilty pleasures.
The Stand – Stephen King
The Dark Tower Series – Stephen King
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – David Eggers
I Know this Much is True & She’s Come Undone – Wally Lamb
When I Found You and Take Me With You – Catherine Ryan Hyde
and SO many others! My dream is to win to lottery so I will have unlimited time to lay around and read instead of going to pesky work!
Thank Jenny and the rest for all of the book suggestions!
Here are a few of my all time favorites! Okay so I have a crazy eclectic range of books . Don’t judge me!
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. I’m a big sucker for romance and this totally does it for me. I’ve read this book gazillion times!
“I can bear pain myself, he said softly, but I couldna bear yours. That would take more strength than I have.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Outlander
Bite Me by Christopher Moore. Cause Vampires and comedy…why not?
“FYI, when I type WTF, you are supposed to read What the Fuck? Same with OMG, and OMFG, which are Oh My God and Oh My Fucking God. Only a completely lame Disney Channel nimnode pronounces the letters.”
― Christopher Moore, Bite Me
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Because it’s an amazing classic.
“I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
Let’s pretend this never happened by Jenny Lawson. This book helped me realize I’m not alone in my depression and anxiety.
“In short? It is exhausting being me. Pretending to be normal is draining and requires amazing amounts of energy and Xanax.” – Jenny Lawson
You have perfectly described the condition of all of my favorite books.
The new one looks wonderful! Off to read through this entire thread to find what I need to add to my always growing ‘to read list’.
This!!!! I know I love a book when I have more than one copy–the one that hasn’t fallen apart yet, and the one that has.
Jenny,
Have you read 84 Charing Cross Road? If you like books that have been lived in, you’ll love it.
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I read it in school, and it is still my favorite book.
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
I used to feel like it was sacrilege to dog ear a book or even (gasp) underline anything in it. I recently calmed my crazy by buying two copies- a hardcover signed copy and a paperback. Although now I feel like I should have loaned the paperback (which is now full of margin secrets and tears) and written in the hardcover instead. Excuse me, I have to leave to buy a third copy. Wait, fourth… I also buy ebooks. I may need an intervention.
Pages engorged and fanned out with sepia-toned coffee stains. That’s how you can tell my favorite books!
I love your blog and your books! Can’t wait for the next one.
Check out Where The Mountain Meets The Moon by Grace Lin. This book will suck you in by chapter 4 and by the end will give you good perspective and a smile too. Enjoy!
You are hilarious! Books I love lately? Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese and Oleander Girl by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
My favourite book of all time is To Kill A Mockingbird. It was so tattered and dog eared that it was unrecognizable. I finally had to let it go after my cat shredded it. Maybe she was pissed that it wasn’t a “how to” book!
If you love cats, you have to read “Tail chasers Song”. I love “Watership Down”. When I was a young girl I loved “A Wrinkle in Time” “Are You There God It’s Me Margaret” and all of the Little House on the Prairie books. I sobbed like a baby reading “The Book Thief”. Your books made me laugh until I cried, but also helped me but a name to a disease I have lived with for 40 years… Dermatillomania. You mentioned it briefly in a sentence, but it meant the world to me to finally understand. Thank you Jenny.
I love how you love that the book you made (the one that a fan asked you to sign) was tattered and loved so well that its cover was ripped, it just goes to show how well you understand your people. I am more of a Victor though and it pains me so much when I dirty my books (ex. a drop of coffee spilled on a page) and that I would cry when it gets a tiny rip on a page or it gets dog-eared. It’s just me and my undiagnosed neutoricism though.
PS. I love spending my free time on your blog. It always makes me so happy reading your posts. You’re funny, Jen 🙂
PPS. I would love to have a copy of your new book but I don’t think it’ll be sold here and I still have to buy a copy of your Furiously Happy! (I have an ebook though so maybe I’d get to have an ebook of your You are Here too).
Love you Jen and keep writing!
reading your book takes me places where laughter and sunshine rule. i relate .
ido ido ido ido ido ido ido ido plz pick me surrenders
I am so excited for YOU ARE HERE! I’m planning on buying it as a birthday gift for my husband to give to me (that’s how we stay happily married… Look what you got me, you’re the best!) Thank you for all that you have written and shared with the world. You have gifted me with smiles and laughter at times when I felt there were no smiles and laughter to be had.
Love this post! Love my books — and especially yours! I love Ross King’s books about Michaelangelo and Manet. I love the book The Disappearing Spoon which is about chemistry and is full of all sorts of salacious gossip about famous chemists. I love love love Pride & Prejudice.
Depression has been lying to me so I’m the last one to the party here in commentlandia, commentsthan, kommentzvlakia.
I live for the books, would love one to help snap me out.
~a fellow author who is feelin’ like taxidermied Eyore
This post just made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. And now I want to go to a used bookstore. I can’t wait to read your new book!
The Adventures of Silly Billy, The Princess and the Pea, the Paper Bag Princess Almost There
Are You Somebody? Good Omens-The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (still waiting for the movie to be made and it better be an all Brits cast!)
I used to take care of my books; gently turning pages, not eating or drinking while I read but it actually never felt natural. I also love finding old books in estate sales or even better were photos or journals (a little personal but you find weird shit at these sales). I cant wait to destroy your new book!
Hi ! I’m from India and a huge fan .
Anitha
anitha.crickcrazy@gmail.com
I’m so glad I’m not the only one who loves her books to their tattered, time-worn demise. Because I’ve definitely witnessed a few of my lovelies turn their last tea-stained, tear-stained, crumpled page for the final time. I wrestle with the guilt that comes alongside my adamant belief that my chronic tactile abuse is honouring them in some small way. And these written treasures deserve that honour. At the very least.
I have too many books that I have loved over the years. Many moons old, some are now separated from their spines and coddled gently as they near the end of their legacy. “Executioner’s Song” by Norman Mailer, S.E. Hinton’s “The Outsiders”, “Cane River” by Lalita Tademy, and Olivia Hawker’s “Where The Lost Wander” and “One For The Black Bird, One For The Crow” are just a few precious titles that patiently bare the brunt of my love.
I can’t wait to read your new book when it is available! Your