It’s funny how some books feel like old friends. It seems I have a lot of them. Madeleine L’Engle‘s first book of her Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet, is such a book. In it the author reveals so much of herself, both good and bad, that I felt I had met someone I could have spent a lovely afternoon with, walking in the woods, sitting by the stream, retracing foible life in the quiet stillness of the sun-kissed woods.

While I’ve been known to throw a book in the waste bin if, in my opinion, it isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, most books I purchase stay in my house a short while and then are moved on to other homes. The best ones are given away. I have been known to sell some good ones to the half-price shop. But that isn’t often, and only because I don’t know who to give them to. The best of the best of what I read remain on my shelf. Those are my friends, the ones I plan to read again and again.

Thing is, I can’t keep a copy of A Circle of Quiet. It keeps slipping off into a friend’s hands and more often than not, time goes by and I know I must buy it again. They are becoming thin on the ground, these good little books. The last one was part of the set but I might be able to find it on Amazon again. They’ve been out of print for so many years.

Another lovely read is Rosamund Pilchner’s The Blue Room. I’ve got my copy back again after lending it out. The stories are sweet but not too. A good book of short stories. None of them end in violence or death. Despite the author’s best-sellers, I wonder if such a book would have ever found a publisher these days. It’s so nice, no death, no violent or shocking endings. It’s got two marks against it. The niceness and it’s short stories. I doubt it would be published today. I really do.

My mother had many book friends. She had been collecting all her books for so many years because there was no library near enough for her to be able to use. Her house was impacted with books. Unfortunately when my father passed away suddenly three years ago, she had to be uprooted and she lost many of her books. It was a completely tragic time for her.

I had to move her from her five-bedroom house to a small one bedroom apartment. She was able to squeeze in many of her cherished things but not many of her books made that transition. To assuage her book-friend loss I now take her to the library every two weeks. At eighty-five my mother reads everything. Her two favorite authors at this moment are Deborah Crombie and John Gresham. I only wish those two had more books at my mother’s library.

Her love of books rubbed off. I hope when I’m her age I have as many beloved book friends as she has.