A distinct escape.

If you were only allowed to own one book, what book would you choose?
Submitted by The Private Library.

My fondest memories of my childhood are long, lazy, hot summer days spent reading until my eyes crossed, until the characters in my books became my best friends, my family, those that provided solace in an uncertain and largely tumultous time.  A distinct escape to the point where I would become more concerned with what was happening to Trixie Belden or Vicky in a Ring of Endless Light, than to what was happening to me.

I read voraciously and broadly; from children's literature to adult fiction, mysteries, romances and classics like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.  I owned a box set of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and I read them more times that I can count.  I was always a creature of habit, returning to my favorites when I was most in need of comfort. 

The best days were when a library run became necessary.   I'd pack up the stack of library books I had devoured in a backpack, grab my bike and begin what seemed at the time, a very long journey to the Waukegan Public Library, always ensuring I was there right as the library opened. There was something so visceral about the long ride on a hot and humid summer morning with sweat trickling down my neck, anticipation of what I might find that day bubbling inside me.

Once inside, a sense of wonderment and excitement built as I breathed in that library smell of old and new, dropped off the spent books and ventured into the library stacks.  What would I find today?  Would it be something new, or would my old friends exert their powerful pull and tug at my heartstrings once again?  I would trail my fingers over spines, reading titles, examining those that grabbed my attention.  Even way back then, I always read the first page.  If it hooked me, I was a goner.  I'd choose as many as I could comfortably fit in my backpack and never had to worry that I wouldn't finish them before they were due.  I always did.  I could and easily did read a book a day.  Now whether or not I actually did return them on time, was another story altogether.  I probably spent more of my allowance on library fines than I would have if I had just purchased some of the books myself.

One spectacular summer, I spent reading in the limbs of our neighbor's maple tree, glancing down at the cars passing underneath from time to time, that is until they finally told me I needed to stop climbing it, for reasons I can no longer recall.  I switched to the trampoline we had set up in the backyard, stretched out on the warm, taut, black canvas, under the shade of another neighbor's tree, breathing in the scents of summer, swatting the occasional mosquito and fell into another world.

Spending time at my grandparents' house in Indiana was no different, except the long and anticipated trip to the library was lost.  They lived directly across the street from the library.  At a dead run, I was out the door and inside the library in five seconds flat.  For a small town library, they had a remarkably large children's book section, almost as large as the adults.  Perhaps larger even.  It was there that Madeline L'Engle caught me in her snare, where the Austins became the family I wished was my own.  I was most alive inside the tales others had woven. 

Since that time, reading is still the joy it was back then, though my ability to devour a book in a single setting or in a single day has reduced dramatically.  But I do still return to my favorites now and again. 

So, in thinking about this question, I began rifling through the extensive collection in my mind.  I was, at first, tempted to cheat and choose a collection of works.  It's not really cheating, is it?  The question states, "What book..."  A collection is a book, right?

I discarded that thought.  The book I would choose needs to stand alone, needs to stand the test of time, needs to provide new and insightful lines of thinking each time you pick it up.

For a time, I considered not even answering this question because it seems cruel to me.  How can you ask someone who adores reading to choose only one book for the rest of their lives?  It would be like telling a foodie they needed to choose one food and be satisfied for the duration.  Noone in their right minds could do that, could they?

And that's when it came to me.  From my memory, visions I've built of an architect and the woman who loved him so deeply, so passionately she could do nothing but try to destroy him, bubbled to the surface.  This book affected me so profoundly from the first moment I cracked it and continues to each time I read it, though for different reasons.  It never fails to present me with a different perspective.  It grows as I grow, morphs and changes as I develop.  It is shattering.  It is tense.  It is epic. It is beautiful and strong and cruel, bewildering and familiar.

It is The Fountainhead.