FIELD NOTES
There are books we read, enjoy, and eventually pass along.
And there are books that somehow become permanent residents.
They're on the shelf. They've moved houses with us. They've survived decluttering attempts. They may not even be books we read particularly often anymore, but getting rid of them feels strangely wrong.
Some books just earn their place.
Books with inscriptions inside
My daughter received a copy of Madeline before she was ever born.
At my baby shower, every woman in my life who was there signed her name and left a little message somewhere throughout the book. It was such an incredibly thoughtful gift.
My daughter and I treasure it, even though she now considers herself a little too old for Madeline.
But she still has it in a drawer.
Someday she'll be even older and will hopefully appreciate that a whole group of women were thinking about her before they had even met her. And she'll have their handwriting to prove it.
That's a book you keep.
Books you've reread
I've reread The Mists of Avalon several times.
I was assigned it in an English class in college and didn't finish it at the time.
Oops.
But after college, I picked it back up, and it became one of those books. I loved the twist on the Arthurian legends from Morgan's perspective, and apparently one reading wasn't enough for me.
I have a few romances I revisit, too. Susan Elizabeth Phillips's Chicago Stars series never gets old. And The Hating Game by Sally Thorne—I honestly don't know how many times I've read that one.
Of course, there are the classics: Pride and Prejudice. A Room with a View. A littler darker: Wuthering Heights. The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings.
There's something comforting about rereading a book. You already know what's going to happen, which sometimes can be exactly what you need.
Books inherited from family
We have one of those family Bibles.
I just don't know who ended up with it.
And, honestly, I'm relieved it isn't me.
The responsibility feels too great. What if I lose it? What if I spill coffee on it?
I'll stick with the children's books my mother gave me.
The Giving Tree. Love You Forever. The Little Red Hen. Charlotte’s Web. Where the Wild Things Are. The Poky Little Puppy. The Runaway Pancake.
I've loved passing those stories on to my own children.
The stories haven't changed, but I’m reading them from a completely different place now.
As so many things go with having kids.
Books you bought at a particular time in your life
The Fourth Wing series belongs here.
I picked it up during a stressful time, and it was pure escapism. Exactly what I needed.
I absolutely love this series for what it brought me. It was entertaining, distracting, completely absorbing—and sometimes that is precisely what a book is supposed to do.
Not every book we keep has to have changed our lives.
Sometimes it just gave us somewhere else to go for a while.
Books that were gifts
As I've mentioned before, Stephen King is one of my favorites. 11/22/63 and On Writing were gifts from people who know me, and they're keepers. Not only for what the books offer me, but for the memories of the people who gave them.
Ina Garten's cookbooks will forever remind me of my mother. We've gifted each other Barefoot Contessa cookbooks over the years.
I don't care how easy it is to pull up a recipe online. Having the beautiful finished photo in front of you is priceless. The smear of chocolate on the corner of the page. The inspiration of seeing all the recipes laid out in a particular order.
The Barefoot Contessa has a forever home in my kitchen.
The difference between a book you like and a book you keep
Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson is a book you keep.
Especially the beautiful hardcover version.
You don't necessarily read it cover to cover every year. You pull it out occasionally when daily life gets loud. You open it somewhere in the middle. You read a poem or two.
Then you put it back.
It's not going anywhere.
I think that's the difference. A book you like is something you enjoyed. A book you keep becomes something else.
It might have someone's handwriting inside. It might remind you of a particular person or a particular time in your life. It might be a story you've returned to so many times that it feels a little like visiting an old friend.
Or it might just be the book you needed at exactly the right moment.
Our bookshelves aren't really records of everything we've read. They're a little more personal than that. They're records of what we wanted to remember.
And, occasionally, what we were apparently unwilling to throw away.
Curious about the books mentioned here? We've gathered the them all in one convenient Bookshop.org list.
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