I wasn't around when this thread got started the other day and by the time I read it, most of my favorites had already been listed. But this thread did inspire me to do something that I had meant to do for a long time.

The first evening that Karen and I met we talked some about books. When it came to a favorite book and movie we enthusiastically agreed and spent some time discussing it. For those of you who don't know, by the end of that first evening I knew with absolute certainty that I was going to marry her if she'd have me. On our next date I asked and she accepted. She is the greatest thing that ever happened in my life and though I didn't know it then, I was marrying my best friend.

So this thread inspired me to go to Abe's Books and find exactly the right presentation/gift grade copy I could afford........and she received it today. We both hugged and cried a bit. Funny how something as pedestrian as a book can also become that special.

Harper Lee may have had only one book in her but To Kill A Mockingbird is the work of a hundred thousand lifetimes. It may be American but I cannot believe that any book surpasses it in truth and poetic beauty. It is a marvelous, soul rending, work of the true writer's art that takes you in from the first words with descriptions that bring all your senses to work in the imagination. I have never encountered better IMNSHO.

Spaw