Bookshelf Meme

Tagged by Sarah M.
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The Rules:
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Bookshelf Meme

Tell me about the book that has been on your shelf the longest.

I don't know which ones my mother bought first, but we still have all the stories she gathered around me as a child. A New Coat for Anna, The Maggie B., Fritz and the Wild Horses, The Big Alfie and Annie Rose Storybook, Blueberries for Sal, Catch Me and Kiss Me and Say it Again, Sloppy Kisses, Stone Soup (Marcia Brown), Caps for Sale, Thunder Cake, Hazel's Amazing Mother, Much Bigger Than Martin, Dogger, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, The Clown of God, The Paper Bag Princess, Make Way for Ducklings ... did I say "gathered" around me? Perhaps I should have said "stacked."

Tell me about a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (i.e. a person, a place, a time, etc.)

Sometimes I remember exactly where I was when I was reading a certain book, and when I revisit that place, the memory of the book comes flooding back. Sitting in a second cousin's closet on Christmas Eve, reading An Acceptable Time, in the bathtub with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (before I dropped it), at my aunt's old house with The Blue Castle ... and there's a certain patch of woods that I pinned as a visual when I was reading Trixie Belden's Happy Valley Mystery. Every time I drive past those woods, I think of Trixie.

Tell me about a book you acquired in some interesting way (gift, serendipity in a used book store, prize, etc.)

I won $50 in my very first story contest when I was 16 or 17, and decided to spend it on books, because that was what Emily Starr did with her first earnings. I bought The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson and inscribed this quote inside:

"Emily has those Parkmans yet–somewhat faded and frayed now, but dearer to her than all the other volumes in her library." ~Emily Climbs, L.M. Montgomery

Tell me about the most recent addition to your shelves.

My birthday was in December, and my dad was going to take me shopping at Macys. But knowing how painful that would be for both of us, I said, "Why don't you take me to Barnes and Noble instead?" The result was Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton, and a new copy of A Countess Below Stairs, by Eva Ibbotson (I'd given my old copy away).

Tell me about a book that has been with you to the most places...

I don't know about most places ... but I took Millions, by Frank Cottrell Boyce, when I went to Kiev. So that's the book that's traveled farthest with me.

Tell me about a bonus book that doesn't fit any of the above questions.

How about, what's on my to-be-read bookshelf now? Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell, Savvy, by Ingrid Law, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer, and Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens.