Birthday Cleverness

My friend Kathleen is celebrating her 37th birthday this week (today, actually!) This Friday, she is having a dozen or so of her girlfriends over for appetizers and dessert and asked for a unique birthday present from all of us. She asked that each of us pick our favorite book and present that to her for her birthday. New, used, kiddy lit or biography - it didn't matter. She also requested that we write in the cover of the book why we chose that particular book and what it meant to us.

Such decisions!

The question was never what author to choose - it was which L.M. Montgomery book! I settled on Anne of Windy Poplars - my hands down favorite. Why book 4? It was the first one in the series that I read oddly enough. My parents bought books 4-6 for me after we moved to Canada and so I started with book 4. I was so captivated by her letters to Gilbert - how real and alive she sounded in them - and as an avid letter writer, I resolved to be more transparent and real in my letters. Anne was also teaching highschool during this book (which was what I dreamed of doing) and I saw how she was able to impact her students in amazing ways.

The Anne series has always been my favorite - I usually reread them once a year just because. Currently, when I have a second to read (translated meaning not long enough amount of time to get into a book that I have to think about) I am rereading Anne of Ingleside. Memories of reading these books as a teenager and living them with Anne - going off to Queens and Redmond and being homesick for Green Gables, being so mad at Gilbert I couldn't stand him, crying when Matthew died . . . all memories of growing up.