The Story of the Stack of Xanth Books Come Home. (Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony).
This rather high stack of books from the Xanth series is a tale of books long since lost and forgotten. Not that the stories were ever forgotten, they are dear to my heart and amongst them lies the book "A Spell for Chameleon", which is responsible for my return to reading many years ago. However, more on that story another day.
The books are a family collection, originally purchased by my Mum, with the occasional one or two bought by me or my brother. When we all went our separate ways - life being what is, people grow up and move out and onwards - the books that my Mum had in 'her' library were divvied up in as fair a way as possible, with the occasional intellectual discourse of "no, I love these books more!" and "no, I do!".
The Xanth books, I believe, were originally divvied into my brother's direction and he then loaned them to a dear friend of both of ours.
... time passes ...
Somehow, we lost contact with this dear friend. Another case of life being what it is, nothing sinister, no big fall outs, just life. However, you guessed it, this meant we also lost contact with the much loved and much worn stack of Xanth books..
A number of years ago, some 10 years since we had last heard from our friend, my brother was holding a wonderful Christmas-Eve party. I was there from interstate and a lot of the 'old gang' were there. The door-bell would ring and in would trot another dear friend. It was just one of those effortless parties, when everything felt good. Another ring of the bell and in walked our long-lost friend. Much hugging and "where the hell have you been?!" ensued.
After things had settled slightly, our dear friend approached my brother and I with a shoe-box. "This is yours" I think he said (It's been some years, but the brevity and simplicity of the sentence is right).
We opened the shoe-box and (oh, I love this phrase) lo and behold, it was full of the stack of Xanth books!
Not only had our dear friend returned to us, but on his first visit he had brought the oh-so-dearly loved books. Of course, things like this are why he is our dear friend.
My brother very kindly offered the books to me that night and they now reside safely and snugly in the 'A' section of my bookshelves. A more loved and well-travelled stack of books you could not find.
"Yes, I love Xanth; I just don't want to be limited to it."
- Piers Anthony (Ogre's Den, February 2006)