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As I read this article I tried to figure out which of my books 📚 would get the golden ticket if o had to pick just one. I can’t do it. When I was little I had an early hard cover edition of Little Women which unfortunately got destroyed when I did something nice for someone and it came back to bite me on the ass. And there is Madeline L’engles A Wrinkle in Time, which was one of my husband’s favorites as well and which I read to my girls as I tried to process his death and somehow reading that book to our children helped me. I don’t know how much they remember of the story, but I know they remember the cuddles and the fact I was reading. Then there is the Great Alta trilogy by Jane Yolen, which inspired me so much, and introduced me to the power and joy that can only come from a trilogy.

I don’t know whether you will consider this necessarily a “book”, but the graphic novels of Elfquest–they had just been rereleased for their 20th anniversary and I was on a trip with my best friends family to Hilton Head, and after being so engrossed in Nora Roberts’ Public Secrets (which is another of my influences as life changing) that I spent the whole day at the beach on my stomach which led to a seriously bad burn which led to my father, who was not a fan of me going on the trip in the first place said that was it I was coming home and he sent me a plane ticket. The trip to the airport was a long one and my back was about 6 shades darker then a lobster(and I was in a lot of pain and the trip back home from the car ride to the airplane seat 💺 I was about ready to throw in the towel and was an exercise in mind over matter and how ( there is nothing to be done but let time pass and eventually you heal) and the only thing left in the car was my friend’s little brother’s graphic novel. They wouldn’t let me take it home (I was on page 87 and myom met me at the gate of the airport and she wasn’t able to find what I was talking about so I made her stop at the waldenbooks on the way home so I could read the end of story which of course, ironically, is finishing with the final quest this year and which I try to reread every 5 to 7 years.

And then I think of the eye opening Kushiel’s trilogy by Jacqueline Carey that opened a whole new world of series and books and a new world and genre of books and a great group of people…