For the last three weeks, you’ve been reading guest posts. If you’ll recall, I scheduled these guest bloggers because I was trying to participate in NaNoWriMo, the goal of which is to write a novel in a month. To win NaNoWriMo, you must write 50,000 words in 30 days. My personal goal was 30,000. Alas, I am a NaNoWriMo loser: I wrote a paltry 20,000 words this month.

Hey. Wait a minute.

20,000 words is pretty rockin’ awesome. It’s 20,000 words I hadn’t written a month ago. So maybe I’m not quite such a loser after all!

Anyhoo, while I was cranking out those 20,000 words, y’all heard from six writers who told us what their desert-island books are (even if Dan cheated and chose three). I don’t know about you, but reading their impassioned responses to these books made my eyes mist. The book lover in me (and probably the writer in me, too) rejoiced to hear that books matter, that they make a difference in people’s lives, that they inspire us to be better people, to live larger lives, to love more freely.

If I needed a reason to keep writing (and some days I do), these posts gave it to me: the hope that someday someone will read something I write and it will be for them what these books are for my guest bloggers.

Now it’s your turn. Yesterday was Thanksgiving. So I want to know: what book (except for the Bible) are you most thankful for? And I want to know why you love it.