TGIF (1)

TGIF is a weekly meme hosted by Ginger of GReads! She posts a book-related question or a prompt that's open to everyone in the book blogging community.

Most Valuable Book: 
From your personal collection of books, which ones hold the most value to you - is it signed by the author? or maybe it's your favorite story of all time? Share it with us.

All of my stories are valuable to me, simply because I value each and every book. I chose the three books listed below because they hold a sentimental value to me, both for the story inside of the covers and the one outside of them.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

The actual act of buying this book holds so much significance to me. The final Harry Potter book came out the summer after I graduated high school. Words can't even express how amazing it was to grow up with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. That was also the summer that my family moved 1000 miles away from the town I'd grown up in. I was about to start college in the fall, as were all of my friends. Any way you look at it, the summer of 2007 was a transitionary time for me. So it was beyond perfect that I came back to visit my hometown and high school friends at the end of that July to participate together in the final hours-long wait for the final book's release. We brought food, made a Harry Potter-inspired CD, a mattress to sit on, and just read aloud and talked about our love of the books. It was just perfect, and the copy I bought from my hometown's local bookstore will always remind me of that.

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

Be warned: this book will show up on literally every meme I participate in until more people start reading it. When I was younger, my mom and I created a mother-daughter book club for some of my friends and their moms. It lasted a number of years, and this is my favorite book that we read for it. I remember picking it out as a potential read from a Chinaberry magazine (anyone remember those?). The book starts out as a more typical YA fantasy read, and then Megan Whalen Turner starts throwing in all of these plot twists from left field and they're brilliant and the book goes from enjoyable to something incredibly clever. All of my friends and their moms were in agreement that this book was amazing. And what was even more amazing was finding out with my friends a few years later that this was not a stand-alone. This is one series I want to continue forever.

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

My signed copy of this book brings together so many of my interests at once. Julia Alvarez came to my school as part of April's National Poetry Month and my entire creative writing class went to the presentation together. It was amazing to hear her present. And it was also great timing - one of my good friends is Dominican-American and kept telling me that as an English and Spanish double major with an interest in writing and historical fiction, I really should check out this Dominican-American writer's work, specifically In the Time of the Butterflies. Alvarez was very gracious and I even got to speak to her for a minute. This is a great work of historical fiction that deals with a cruel dictatorship and four sisters willing to oppose it in a country we normally don't hear too much about: the Dominican Republic.

So these are three of my most valuable books. Let me know what some of your most valuable books are!