Last week, y'all identified a HaBO from author Gwen Hayes. She is most grateful – who wouldn't be, freed from the unending job of describing a book to librarians and booksellers, watching as their faces crumple into disbelief and confusion as more outlandish and disordered plot details are revealed? So Gwen would like to offer a prize!
She wants to give one of y'all a $25 gift card to the bookstore of your choice to say a big whopping thank you. So! S-HaBO-Day Givaway time!
To enter, please leave a comment and tell us one book you would never, ever want to lose, the one that will keep moving with you from home to home all the way to the retirement community with the incredibly good-looking grounds crew. Leave a comment and you're entered to win. I'll choose the winner at random on Monday, 25 February 2013 at 8:30am ET.
Standard disclaimers apply: void where prohibited. Open to international residents subject to applicable law. Must be over 18 and wearing excellent socks to win. Close cover before striking. And stop striking – didn't your mom tell you not to hit people?
Thanks to Gwen for the impromptu giveaway – hope you're enjoying your lost book!
Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me
My paperback copy of To Kill A Mockingbird. It’s totally well worn and near falling apart, but I remember my mom giving it to me as a summer reading assignment when I was 10. I moaned and whined and grumped for weeks, but I finally took it with me as we were driving to Colorado on vacation…and I read the whole thing before we got there! It’s still the book I read when I’m homesick or need soothing, but this particular copy has sentimental feelings attached, too.
My copy of “Anne of Green Gables”. I’d always read them growing up, but for some reason, I only owned books 4, 5, and 6. In college one day, I was with my boyfriend shopping and I came across the first 3 books for sale. I immediately scooped them up and began rereading my favorite one that night – “Anne of the Island”.
My boyfriend was really bothered by this. He kept asking why I hadn’t started with the first one and asking when I was going to get to it. I kept telling him I’d read it already, I’ll re-read it soon, but I wanted to read Island first.
One night, he comes to me, opens Green Gables to the inside cover and says “read this.” He’d written a poem, proposing to me in there.
There are many books that I can’t survive without, but as someone mentioned above, now, with the nook and amazon and online shopping, almost nothing is truly irreplacable. I’ve also had to downsize significantly in the past year, so I’ve already had to live through the reality of keep vs not. However, I must say that I don’t think I’d every willingly get rid of my copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. I’ve had it for at least 20 years and I hope to have it for another 20.
So many good books on this thread!
I’m not very sentimental about the actual book itself, so long as I can get it in digital. I realized recently that I don’t even own a paper copy of my first published book. But my comfort reads are the Born In (Fire, Ice, Shame) Series by Nora Roberts and Years by LaVyrle Spencer.
P.S. Don’t enter me in the giveaway.
I have a few books that I’ve managed to find in used bookstores or that I’ve had to buy used online as they are out of print/hard-to-find, so those are the ones I’d least like to loose (as I’d have to pay lots to replace them). Out of these, I think Water Witch by Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice is the one I’d least like to loose.
Oh god, only one? This is why I have an iPad- so this option never has to come up! If I had to narrow it down to a series, (because most of my favorite books are series) I would either say outlander or Paullina Simmons bronze horseman trilogy. The former I would be glad to have in ebooks, as those books are big! The latter because holy cow, no book series has made me that suspenseful, heartbroken, excited and hopeful at the same time while literally cooing Excited Book Noise all the while.
I’m trying to think of any books that I have that I love that would be irreplaceable. I mean, I wouldn’t like to lose my old copy of Pride and Prejudice, but it’s a paperback and besides, I have an annotated one, too.
I have an old edition of Jane Eyre that I adore. There are pictures that are woodcuts (I think) and are very weepy and romantic (as in a little extra gothic, not that they convey the romance a lot). I first read that copy of it and loved the book as a teen. Nowadays, I think it’s a bit OTT, but hey, classic.
Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison.
All of my LM Montgomery books. She was the first author that I started collecting… which led to an extremely large book collection! My family hates it when I move because they have to move all of my books; I just couldn’t leave any behind!
It’s very hard to pick just one, I have lots of wonderful autographed books that I wouldn’t want to part with. I’ll go with The Inexplicables by Cherie Priest because that’s the only one of her books I have signed. 😀
I’ll go with “Enfants, c’est l’Hydragon qui passe” (a graphic novel by Forrest)—it’s a favorite comfort read, and it’s difficult to get French books in the US. But the most tape-mended book on my shelf is “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” (Shirley Jackson).
I have a 1953 antholgy of children’s books called The Children’s Hour. I read them to pieces when I was growing up, and they traveled with me from Mexico to Oregon and farther—all 16 volumes. I will keep them forever. Even though I plan to never have children, I will never give up those books. They are directly responsible for turning me into the passionate reader I am today.
One of my several copies of “Pride and Prejudice.” I don’t care if it’s cliche, I love it.
Born in Fire is soooo good, Rogan Sweeny is probably my favorite hero and I believe the original inspiration for Roarke.
I couldn’t give up “Remembrance” by Jude Deveraux. Past lives/time travel, epic angst, and a happy ending… it’s my favorite of hers, and I love her books a lot.
No thinking required. My hardback copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. It doesn’t even get loaned out as my paperback copy was borrowed and never returned.
Master of the Senate. Not a romantic book, but it’s one of my favorites and it was given to me by my dad. Priceless.
Mr. Blue by Myles Connolly. Most of the books I deeply love—& there are many more than one—are replaceable if I had a fire or something, but Mr. Blue, a quasi-Christian fable I encountered in 7th grade, is not. I don’t even know if I’d still love it now, half a century later, but it was the first book I used to hide when evil weather was predicted and the first I’d rescue in a fire for many years, so I guess I’d still think of it first when I move to elderly housing or—god forbid—in with my kids
.
My god, I haven’t thought of that book in decades. Now I’m going to have to hunt down a copy to reread as it was my favorite book for quite a long time. Thanks for the reminder. I used to like Madeline Brent & Jill Tattersall too. You?
(Please do not consider this an entry.)
My original copy of Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones. My favorite book as a kid. Now the cover’s falling off and the binding is coming undone, but that one copy holds so many happy memories.
Well, I would say it would be Outlander by Diana Gabaldon but I can never move it anywhere because I keep giving it away! So, I’ve looked at my bookshelf and the oldest book there (in age and time on my bookshelf) is Pippi Longstocking. I haven’t read it in years but I keep it anyway.
I have a signed first edition copy of “Ammie Come Home” by Barbara Michaels. I’d grab that and my kindle as I run out the door—with my two cats stuffed in a pillowcase.
Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie
The 3 books I have that I would find irreplaceable are the complete works of Shakespeare my dad gave me for my 10th birthday, the hand bound version an ex made me when I thought it had been lost, and my dad’s copy of a poetry anthology that he used to read me as bedtime stories (A Little Treasury of British Poetry). (Although it is a mistake to read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to a three year old.) Everything else could be replaced, although it would be a pain, and I am stupidly attached to all the books I own, even the ones I hate.
But don’t enter me in the giveaway. I am so beyond useless at HABOs I’d feel guilty.
It’s a really, really hard thing to narrow it down to one. But I went with my copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel with the cover that’s the same as the musical poster art:
http://www.amazon.com/Scarlet-…
I love the book on its own of course, but I remember getting it as a teenager and just staring at it. The cover of Mr. Impossible somehow reminds me of it (only in extremely hot pink!), and was one of the things that drew me to it to try it as my first real stab at romance.
(honorable mentions: the beautifully bound copy of Shakespeare’s complete works my father gave me and my very old but well cared for copy of The Rescuers by Margery Sharp)
The Rainbow Season by Lisa Gregory
oh yeah, and Victoria Holt, and Jane Aiken Hodge. And going waaaay back, all the Harlequins (the really old ones), by Essie Summers. Most of her books were set in New Zealand, and they were funny!
M.M. Kaye – The Shadow of the Moon.
My copy of Poppy Z Brite’s Lost souls.
It’s rough and more focused on squicky horror along with romance, but I want to keep it as a reminder that everything can be sold if pitched to the right publisher. It was the first book Mr. Brite has ever had published, and I like to think of the book as an inspiration for my writing blahs.
My beat-up copy of Dorothy L. Sayer’s Gaudy Night (very narrowly) nudges out the first edition Outlander and the copy of Pride and Prejudice my mother gave me for my 13th birthday (which she didn’t inscribe, or it would be first).
No thought needed—my autographed copy of PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON, by Peter Yarrow. To my infinite embarrassment, I burst into tears when he signed it, and he kissed me.
My signed copy of Bertrice Small’s Love, Remember Me. I cried like a freaking moron when I met her.
My well worn copy of the Duke and I by Julia Quinn. It set off such a wonderful series and I’ve re-read it so many times.
I’m cheating by claiming all six books of The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett. I can’t give any of them up.
For Christmas, my mom passed on a compilation of Sherlock Holmes that she stole from my great-aunt to give us. It’s signed, from my grandparents to my great-grandfather, and my mom knows how much my wife loves Holmes. It’s a sign that she accepts our relationship, and it’s our first family heirloom.
I have a certain few paperbacks that I can’t give up, no matter the current technological advances – they include The Rainbow Season by Lisa Gregory and Small Town Girl by LaVyrle Spencer, and also Public Secrets by Nora Roberts. Definitely tough to pick just one!
Oh good lord, there is not ONE—there are a bunch!
My mother gave me a first edition hardback Complete Sherlock Holmes, which I treasure, and there’s an old and very tattered copy of a Spanish translation of Henri de Lagardère (Le Bossu) which belonged to my grandfather, and then my father’s almost complete collection of Tarzan paperbacks, and the 1917 Diccionario de Real Academia de la Lengua Española, and…
*ahem*
…all of which have moved with me to 4 different countries and a total of 8 houses, so far.
(And then, there are a number of paperbacks which are now either hard or impossible to find which will also go with me wherever next I go)
(Packing light? what’s that?
There was a time when that would have been my choice too. Loved it so much.
There’s so many books I wouldn’t feel like *myself* without… but since I have to pick one, I’m picking Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp, the first adult novel I fell in love with.