If you ever read one book...make it THIS one

I read it for the first time when I was seventeen.  This book changed my life.  This book shaped my mind. This book guides my heart.  This book guards my soul.

It is elegantly simple, innocently human and just absolutely wow.  I can honestly say that there is line after line, paragraph after paragraph, chapter after chapter that made me stop and completely re-evaluate my life.

This is the gift I give to those I love the most, to those who are hurting and turn to me for help, to those who need guidance in this life, to those who love life.  Rich or poor, adult or child, Christian or non-Christian, hardened cynic or gullible innocent, there are levels of this book that will appeal to anyone.

It is the perfect image of how our relationship with this tattered imperfect world should be.  It is an infinitely purer image of how faith should be than any thousands of years of religion has produced.  It is the wisdom of a child.  An amazing child.  A human child.  Anna.

I urge you - if you ever buy one book again in your life, if you ever borrow one book from a library again in your life, make it this one.  It is life-changing.  It doesnt preach, it doesnt lecture, it is genuinely perfection.  It is love in book form.

And yes, it makes it all the better that my beautiful mother chose to name me Anna because she too had fallen in love with this book, with this child.  She hoped that her redheaded child would at the very least share the love of life her redheaded namesake possessed.

I love sharing my name with Anna.  This book transformed me.  Read it.  I beg you.