Booking Through Thursday.

So, it’s my birthday today. (Please, no applause.) But it’s inspiring today’s question–
What, if any, memorable or special book have you ever gotten as a present? Birthday or otherwise. What made it so notable? The person who gave it? The book itself? The “gift aura?”

First off, let's hear it for November birthdays. Mine is in three days. Happy Birthday to you, me, and everyone else whose birthday is in November.

I have two books that were given to me as gifts for which I have a particular fondness. First, early in my fourth grade year of school my family moved from Woodbridge, Virginia to Herndon, Virginia. My fourth grade teacher gave me a copy of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I still have the very same copy. However, I have, much to my embarrassment, never read it. But, I plan to remedy this by reading this very copy for the Decades Challenge.

Second, for Christmas in 1981, my great grandmother gave me the sci-fi book The Hydronaut Adventures by Carl L. Biemiller. I remember being fascinated by it as a child. The cover shows two men in some kind of bubble beneath the ocean. Two mean looking sharks prowl the waters above them. I remember looking at that cover and feeling that the future could bring anything, that the possibilities were endless. That, perhaps, when I was an adult, I too might live beneath the ocean.

Both of these books have been with me for most of my life. They are, in fact, the two books I have owned for the longest time. They moved with me from Virginia to Hawaii and back. They moved with me New Orleans and survived hurricane Katrina. And they are here with me now in Texas, where they hold a special place in my library.