What Makes A Book Priceless?

A generous dose of love can make the difference

For as long as I can remember, I have loved words and reading. Like many, I became a prolific reader at an early age, and was deluged with books for Christmas and for my birthdays and everything in between.

At eleven years of age I was reading Shakespeare and at twelve I read some of James Mitchener’s novels and then Arthur Hailey’s “Roots”.

“Roots”, written in 1976 and made into a movie, tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent, and put into slavery. While there is some doubt over the authenticity of “Roots” this is a story that I will never forget.

However, the books that are priceless to me are those that people who loved me, gave to me while I was a child

“Algonquin, the Story of a Great Dog” by Dion Henderson

I like this story because of the beautiful way in which it is written and because it is about a dog.

This book was given to me by my grand-mother (my adoptive mother’s mother), and survived my adoptive mother giving away nearly all of my childhood books, unbidden.

I still treasure this book today because I loved my grandmother and felt she loved me, plus the story had unintended uncanny deep connections with me.

The book survived, as Algonquin did.

Like Algonquin, I led a strange double life, in my case, borne out by being taken away from my country, culture and family of birth, and being brought up in Australia.

Animals, including dogs and cats, whom I came to dote upon, were very much in my childhood, and thus books about animals were lavished upon me.

I thought it the best thing in the world, when I won a beautiful large Guinea Pig in a primary school raffle.

I called this guinea pig “Little Guinea” as a sarcastic joke, a reflection of the contradictory life, that as an inter-country adoptee, I led.

As my temporary confidence in myself grew, I re-named him “Guinea Gold.”

What a beautiful name to remember my guinea pig as!

You see, he was half chocolate brown and half white. The photo below shows the halves that I’m talking about, except my big guinea gold’s colors were the other way around - his head and front part were black and his rear was white.

Algonquin had a black head and a white body, like Guinea Gold.

My entire life has been a patch-work of contrasts, including my own two sides as Jekyll and Hyde as I made it through child-hood abuse and health issues and plummeting self-worth issues.

The split 2 color scheme of Guinea Gold and Algonquin were subconscious reminders to me that there are different sides to everything. I just needed to believe in the right ones.

“Algonquin the Story of a Great Dog” is priceless to me because a figure, who I thought truly loved me for who I was, my grandmother, gave it to me.

I received this book as a sign that somebody loved me, even though I didn’t love myself.

A childhood book given unconditionally by someone can be an elixir of life.

“A Gap in Nature : Discovering the World’s Extinct Animals” by Tim Flannery and Peter Shouten

In high school I won the Honour Certificate for being the best student in History. Because of my connection to animals and growing up by a river with nature as my backyard, I went on to University to study Biology.

In my blog “Fascinating Animals” which I started in 2012, I mention that if I had to grab 2 or 3 books as I was fleeing my house (for whatever urgent reason) that one of the books I would take with me would be “A Gap in Nature.”

As an adult, I bought this book for myself, as soon as it was published in 2001.

It is a sad book, because as it’s name suggests, it showcases fascinating animals in the past, who are now no more. But I love this book because the pictures are beautiful and evocative of real-life creatures that once roamed Earth.

With my imagination I can connect to these animals as if I were there, and try to bring their medicine or magic into our current world-living. This book reminds me of how precious Life is, and what can happen if we neglect it.

Once again, this book is reminiscent of my own Life. I have been neglected and misunderstood. Fortunately because I am one of the keystone species of Homo sapiens (or a human being), and due to the grace of God blessing me with gifts of resilience, I have not become “extinct.”

This book is priceless to me because I see the sacred in everything.

“A Gap in Nature” reminds me to care for the sacred in me.

It reminds me to love myself. The market price was set by the content matching my deep inner feelings.

This book is my link to the imprint that these extinct creatures have left. My love for living beings and my authentic care of the environment has created a special lasting bond between this book and I. Its story also leads to self-love.

Meaning and positive connections and helpful memories make a book valuable

The Readers Digest Book of Things to Make and Do by Readers Digest

When I was around fourteen or fifteen my mother had too much to handle, and she took it out on various things, like suddenly giving away Guinea Gold and nearly all of my books. One day they were there, the next day gone.

I was shocked by her explanations. “You’re too old for them” with reference to the books, and “You didn’t clean his cage” related to my guinea pig. Well, there was rarely a time that I didn’t clean Guinea Gold’s cage, and that was because his cage was inside the bird aviary.

When I opened his cage to try to get him out and into safe-keeping while I mucked out his run and sleeping quarters, he would usually squeak and fight me tooth and nail. Most of the time I put up with his reluctance to come out of his cage.

There were many losses in my life, but a treasure that somehow survived Mum’s fits of outrage, was the splendid “Readers Digest Book of Things to Make and Do.”

I was truly grateful for all the many books that I was given and I wrote my name and the year in the fly-leaf of every book. The books that I loved to bits, like the Kit Hunter series, the Trixie Belden series, and the Famous Five, all disappeared.

They may be out there somewhere with someone, second-hand, with my name and a year in them. I learned to accept Mum not letting me keep a single book other than those that miraculously she couldn’t get her hands on. The latter included “Heidi” and a children’s book that I still love today, called “Samantha’s Secret Room.”

I guess that many of us have a few arts & crafts books in our houses. Well, this book, the “Readers Digest Things To Make and Do” must be the cream of the crop. It is a delight with acrylic work, knitting, embroidery, model boats, photography, printing, tie-and-dye, weaving, woodwork and more.

This book was given to us kids by our parents, and I think that it was after Mum turfed out 99.9 percent of my books that I owned before my mid-teens.

Whenever it was, it was me who treasured and kept this one.

I even made the shadow puppets using the book. My favourite part of the book was and is the section on creating peg dolls and miniature furniture and accessories for the Doll Houses.

I can let my imagination soar when I read this book. After I left home at age eighteen, it brought memories of pleasant times in art classes at school, with photo-grams, linoleum pictures, and screen-printing.

It evoked pictures of YMCA arts lessons, and motivated me to keep an interest in macrame and crochet, which I was introduced to at school.

While the family never used this book to make a doll’s house or anything much from the book, its repository of wonders and the evidence that you can build and do a lot, given the will and simple resources, inspired me.

Today my rooms are filled with books and there are many that I love and read over or would read again.

I view books as windows to the collective human psyche. Books speak to us individually and collectively.

They help us connect the dots at hidden levels. I never feel alone while I have books.

This book is priceless to me and I would never sell it, because not only is does it provide a bounty of arts and crafts, but it connects me to my mother.

In the good days of being a relatively functional family, with the children gainfully and happily involved in out-door games and pursuits, and with learning, Mum gifted this book to us.

It was offered to us with love.

This generous dose of love from my mother helped me see and learn the beauty of pure intentional giving.

Life has taught me that some things to make and do are not easy for anyone.

My life has been hard, but I have always focused upon intentions.

Appreciating their love, and understanding and forgiving those who have partially wronged you, frees up a chapter in your life, where the soft edges between their intentions and your perceptions interweave.

Books that are given to you with love and that help you to relate well to yourself and to others are those which are priceless.