My favorite book.

This is a blog about my favorite book. I don't mean my favorite book to read, but rather my most treasured book in my collection. As many of you know, I am a collector. I follow most of the collectibles markets, and I like to collect the old, the rare, and the unusual. Particularly I collect books, and I have a fairly large and varied collection. My favorite book in this collection is not my signed copy of Mother Night by Vonnegut, or my signed God Knows by Heller. Its not even my copy of Catch-22 from high school that my friends signed like it was a yearbook. It is in fact an old beat up and faded 1971 copy of The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander. Many of you might not be familiar with this series. Its the series that the Disney movie "The Black Cauldron" was taken from. It is a childrens or if you prefer tweens series written very much like Eragon or Harry Potter, and very much along those lines in terms of theme. Of course this series pre-dates those series by about 40 years, and in terms of writing ability Mr. Alexander is actually far superior, although he doesn't wind a story as well as Rowling. I loved this books when I read them, and I still love them. Even though I hardly here them mentioned, their themes and conventions come up so much in literature that I know people have to be borrowing from them. But anyway I digress, the quality of the series really isn't the point of this blog, so back to the point. In 1999, after I graduated High School I had the chance to go to Montana to spend a week in a camp for one of my best friends family reunion. I know that sounds a bit odd, but I almost consider this family as much my family as my own family. This of course is the Smith Family. This was a great trip, and everybody that I close friends with at the time went as well. While we were there we had limited access to stores of any kind, the closest town was Gardner, Montana and it is the entry way into Yellowstone. Its a small little town, a gas station, a few local restaurants, a few touristy type stores, and a few local stores. We were passing some time in this town one day, having just had lunch at one of the most awesome burger places on the planet (seriously they have about 150 burger toppings) I decided that I would like to find a place where I could find a book, because I had read the books that I had brought with me. We pull up to this little Mom and Pop flea market on the outskirts of town, and I said you know I would like to have a copy of the Prydain Chronicles. I don't have a copy, and I think I would really enjoy reading them right now, and the whole collection would keep my occupied for the drive home. Well, we went in and they had about 4 books on a shelf with about an inch of dust on them. 3 of them were romance novels, but the 4th one was, lo and behold, my trusty worn black copy of The Prydain Chronicles. What were the chances of that? To me the odd coincidence of that actually being there, combined with the memories of my first great adventure after High school makes it a treasured possession.