When I first heard the subject for this thread, I knew that one of my responses would be books.  They have been an important part of my life, helping me through loneliness, and sadness, enriching my mind, pulling me into to adventures, and giving me the giggles.  Here are some of my favorites, and two stories.

As children, my sister Leslie and I had a regular pastime of reading poems to each other and quotes from Bartlette's Familiar quotations.  The poetry book we used most often was "The Best Loved Poems of the American People."  I can look at these two books and picture the two of us sprawled out on the carpet, taking turns reading poems and quotes.  When I was in Tech School in the Air Force, I cashed my check (a pretty paltry affair), took a bus to the mall, walked straight into Walden's, and bought my own copies of Bartlett's, Best Loved Poems, and "The Complete Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay".  My shopping was done, my money was all gone, and I felt as rich as the Queen. 

The Stephen Vincent Benet book is an old one that was my mom's that she got as a gift from a roomate before I was born.  She gave it to me recently.  It is a book of short stories.  The first story is "By The Waters of Babylon."  It is the first science fiction story that I ever read.  Every time I picked up this book, I would have to read this story again first.  When I read it, I can still feel the wonder of entering a world totally different and infinitely sadder than my own.

Books are a definite treasure to me, whether they cheer me up like Douglas Adams' and Terry Pratchett's books, stir my emotions, teach me about the past, take me on adventures, or into the life of someone long dead.  My life would be a much poorer one without them.