Skip to main content

Book-friends and book-best-friends

This is going to sound weird, but if you’re a Reader, you’ll totally understand where I’m coming from.

When you read a good book, that book becomes your friend.

It’s totally strange and maybe even a bit psychologically deviant but it’s true. That book becomes like your closest friend, someone you’re spending time with and loving the conversation.

I will admit, I have sometimes loved a book so much I will hug it like I’m hugging a person. There, I have confessed my mental disturbance to all the blogosphere.

But those of you who are Readers will completely get me.

You devour books by favorite authors because you became good friends with one of her titles, and you hope to find new friends in her other titles. Your chances are good since you already loved one of her stories.

You’re always on the lookout for a new friend. Some books disappoint, but then suddenly you’ll stumble on a book (which might not even have that great a cover or back cover blurb) and you’re caught in an amazing story with amazing characters and you know you’ve found a friend.

Some of my books are book-friends, but some are book-best-friends. They’re the ones I’ll keep because I could see myself rereading them, they were that good.

I was thinking today about why some books are book-friends and why some are book-best-friends. My book-friends are still highly entertaining, enthralling reads. I just finished one yesterday. But it wasn’t a book-best-friend.

I think that for my book-best-friends, there is something about the characters that I especially love. I relate to them on a deeper level, or perhaps I admire them greatly. Their stories move me deep in my gut rather than just being an entertaining read.

I love my book-friends, but I am also constantly on the lookout for a new book-best-friend. I also do not limit the number of book-best-friends that I have, the more the merrier, in my opinion. But since my shelves are overflowing, I have gotten some book-best-friends as ebooks and given away my print copies so that my book-best-friends take up less real estate in my house.

So my blog friends, do you feel me? I know some of you non-Readers are going to tell me to hie to a psychologist, but you Readers know what I’m talking about. What are some book-best-friends you’ve got?

Comments

Susan F. said…
I totally understand this! Some of my very best friends have even been given precious reading time for another read. That is big with me. Only the very best-book-friend can ever get read more than once. :) I've read "The Grapes of Wrath" twice and hope to get to at least one more time.
minky said…
I totally understand. I have books you can't pay me to get rid of..I've read and re-read them because something in them touches my soul. They are my book best friends. Books by Camy Tang, Dee Henderson rank among by book best friends. Irene Hannon & Karen Kingsbury are really good book friends.
CollegeGrad18 said…
Oh, I get this! I have some books that I've read so many times I almost have them memorized. There's this one series called the Tahn Series by L.A. Kelly that I don't think I'll ever get tired of rereading.
Anonymous said…
Cornelia in Love Walked In, and Belong To Me, by Marisa de los Santos.
Camy Tang said…
I've never read Grapes of Wrath, does that make me a heathen? :) I'll have to try it.
Camy Tang said…
Aw thanks! I love Dee Henderson, Irene Hannon, and Karen Kingsbury, too! I like having them on ebook because I can take them with me wherever I go and if I want to re-read anything, they're right there!
Camy Tang said…
I need to try that! Yes, I've read Persuasion by Jane Austen so many times I practically have it memorized, too!
Camy Tang said…
I've never heard of those! I'll have to try to find them.
noseinanovel said…
I know exactly what you mean! I have been reading (and re-reading, and re-reading) Robin Jones Gunn's books for almost 12 years now. Christy Miller and Sierra Jensen are my best friends and I find myself thinking about them like they are real people! You know, like, "I wonder what they're up to? Wait, they're not real...right?" And, of course, Anne (of Green Gables, Avonlea) has been a book best friend since I first cracked open her story. I often find myself in "Anne-ish" moments or thinking, Okay - WWAD?
Camy Tang said…
LOL! I totally loved Anne of Green Gables, too! I wish all those books were out in ebook but I think one is still not available.

Popular Posts

I got my cover!

Captain’s Log, Supplemental Blog book giveaway: To enter, go to the blog links below and post a comment there. Eyes of Elisha by Brandilyn Collins Tangerine by Marilynn Griffith I GOT MY COVER!!!! What do you guys think?

Toilet seat cover

Captain’s Log, Supplemental Update August 2008: I wrote up the pattern for this with "improvements"! Here's the link to my No Cold Bums toilet seat cover ! Okay, remember a few days ago I was complaining about the cold toilet seat in my bathroom? Well, I decided to knit a seat cover. Not a lid cover, but a seat cover. I went online and couldn’t find anything for the seat, just one pattern for the lid by Feminitz.com . However, I took her pattern for the inside edge of the lid cover and modified it to make a seat cover. Here it is! It’s really ugly stitch-wise because originally I made it too small and had to extend it a couple inches on each side. I figured I’d be the one staring at it, so who cared if the extension wasn’t perfectly invisible? I used acrylic yarn since, well, that’s what I had, and also because it’s easy to wash. I’ll probably have to wash this cover every week or so, but it’s easy to take off—I made ties which you can see near the back of the seat. And...

Cover Reveal + New Logo for Year of the Dog, a Mahina Security Novel

A New Look for Year of the Dog (and a Behind-the-Scenes Oops!) What do a dog trainer, a security expert, and a nearly-naked book cover have in common? Let me explain. 😅 Year of the Dog is the first book in my Christian romantic suspense series, Mahina Security, set in beautiful (and sometimes dangerous) Hawaii. It features quirky humor, family tensions, sweet romance, and a mystery involving a missing person—and it’s now available to read in the Christian suspense anthology, Danger in the Shadows , on Kindle Unlimited ! But before that happened, I had a bit of a cover mishap… While creating the ebook cover, I realized that the original stock photo made my heroine look, well, completely nekkid. 😳 She’s actually wearing a tube top in the image, but when I cropped it for the ebook, the top disappeared—leaving her looking very PG-13. To fix it, I did some Canva magic on a strappy top from another image and stuck it onto the model (so she’s decent now). But when I resize...

Excerpt - A HUNDRED YEARS OF HAPPINESS by Nicole Seitz

Captain's Log, Stardate 03.05.2009 Update: Sorry, this giveaway is closed. A Hundred Years of Happiness by Nicole Seitz A beautiful young woman. An American soldier. A war-torn country. Nearly forty years of silence. Now, two daughters search for the truth they hope will set them free and the elusive peace their parents have never found. In the South Carolina Lowcountry, a young mother named Katherine Ann is struggling to help her tempestuous father, by plunging into a world of secrets he never talks about. A fry cook named Lisa is trying desperately to reach her grieving Vietnamese mother, who has never fully adjusted to life in the States. And somewhere far away, a lost soul named Ernest is drifting, treading water, searching for what he lost on a long-ago mountain. They're all longing for connection. For the war that touched them to finally end. For their hundred years of happiness at long last to begin. From the beloved author of The Spirit of Sweetgrass...

Favorite chocolate?

Captain's Log, Stardate 04.22.2008 Lately I’ve been on this chocolate kick. Normally, I’m not a huge chocoholic like Captain Caffeine. I enjoy chocolate, but if given a choice, I’ll usually choose a fruit or custard/creamy dessert over a triple decadence chocolate layer cake or a chocolate-lovers’ downfall brownie. But lately, I’ve been eating dark chocolate squares. I think it started when I went into Joseph Schmidt gourmet chocolate shop in Santana Row. We’d gotten Joseph Schmidt truffles for Christmas, and they’d been fabulous—I can honestly say that they were as good as DeBrand truffles (author Colleen Coble’s favorite). So when I saw the brick and mortar shop in Santana Row, I went in immediately. Inside, this man was buying up stacks—and I kid you not, stacks —of the Joseph Schmidt Belgian Dark Chocolate bars. He raved about them, said they were terrific. A cashier was restocking the display case the man had cleaned out, and I snagged a bar. “I’ve got to try one, after watc...