Booking Through Thursday: Thankful

Each Thursday, Deb at Booking Through Thursday asks a bookish question, and readers put their answers on their own blogs and link up. Thanks Deb for keeping the book-discussion going. :)

What book or author are you most thankful to have discovered? Have you read everything they’ve written? Reread them? Why do you appreciate them so much?

I’ve been taking part in this meme almost every week for about 1½ years now. Inevitably, some topics tend to get repeated after a while. Even when the questions vary slightly, my answers tend to frequently sneak away in the direction of certain authors/ books/ genres which have remained my favourites for a long time.

Last year too, around American Thanksgiving, the question was about authors and books we are thankful for. You will find my answer here: Worth Reading More Than Once. And some followers of my blogs will probably know my favourite authors by now even without peeking!

So instead of writing yet another tribute to C.S. Lewis and/or J.K. Rowling, I’ll mention a book and author I’m thankful to have just recently discovered. In fact I finished the book only a couple of days ago, and before I bought it, I had never even heard of the author. But as it turned out I enjoyed it enough to feel curious try another one soon. Lucky for me it seems she has written four so far (not in a series but each their own story).

It’s not very often that I just go into a bookshop and buy a book without having heard of either the title or the author before. With this one I did just that, though. Went into the bookshop to browse around without anything specific in mind; and came out with The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen.

Here’s the cover and blurb that made me buy it:

Emily Benedict came to Mullaby, North Carolina, hoping to solve some of the riddles surrounding her mother’s life. Why did she leave her hometown so suddenly? Why did she vow never to return?

But in a place where unexplained lights skip across the yard at midnight, where the wallpaper in your bedroom changes so suit your mood, and where a neighbour bakes hummingbird cakes in the hope of bringing back a lost love, Emily will find that the answers are not what she expects…

In fact one of the things I found most enchanting about this book was the fact that until the end, I too did not have a clue what to expect, or even quite in what ‘genre’ to put it. But I also liked her use of language, and after finishing the book I have half a dozen little sticky notes sticking out it, marking quotes… Like:

He’d meant – absolutely – everything he’d said at the time, all caught up in the fantasy come true. But adolescence is like having only enough light to see the step directly in front of you, and no farther.

or

‘I’m homesick all the time,’ she said. ‘I just don’t know where home is.’