Book Friends Forever

J.D. and I were talking about this the other night: how can you tell that someone is destined to be a friend? Not just a friend--but the friend-of-your-life type friend, a real, bona fide kindred spirit?

Every deep, true friendship starts with a moment that comes after a long string of moments, in which you are looking at another person and you realize: hey, I love you. You get me. And you feel suddenly that you can tell that person anything, everything, that more than that, you want to. And you want them to tell you, too. But what gets you to that place? What sparks that moment?

For me, it is a lot to do with books. And it always has been.

I used to exchange Sweet Valley books with a girl in my 6th grade class. I still remember the day I realized that unlike the other girls, we weren't reading them seriously, crying when Liz Wakefield lapses into her umpteenth coma. We understood the satire, we were laughing at them, we loved the books but we loved them because they were so ridiculous. Our friendship lasted for years, until we grew up and went away to college, and we can still drop into each others' lives now and its seamless. It's that kind of friendship, and it's all because of a book.

Adrienne and Louise are two of my best friends nowadays. We have never met in real life, living all spread out across the country from each other, but they are true friend-of-my-life friends, probably the only people outside my husband whom I feel like I can tell literally anything. We've been friends for--oomph--going on 10 years now, and we met on a messageboard dedicated to discussing L.M. Montgomery fanfiction. There were a ton of other people in the group to begin with, but slowly we drew together over our deep love of all things Anne of Green Gables and finally spun off into a little circle of our own. We speak (write) to each other nearly every day, about everything that's wrong or right in our lives. I can't imagine my world without them in it.

And it's all because of a book.

And it goes the other way. I am snob enough to admit. I like some shitty literature myself, but when I find out that someone likes (really loves) a certain book--I judge. Twilight. The Da Vinci Code. Finding out that one of these books is another person's Anne--we might be the best of acquaintances, but we will never be the kind of BFF that I mean. Because I can't talk about my hopes and dreams, my marriage, with someone who thinks that "true love" looks like a 100-year-old passive-aggressive vampire emotionally abusing a seriously mentally f-ed up teenage girl. And then there are people who don't like reading. I don't understand them. I pity them. And what kind of forever friendship can grow out of pity?

It's hard to make friends, the older you get. And it's hard to make friends as a mom. There's just not the kind of time you need to let it develop, all those slow moments leading to that one big one. Sometimes I wish I could use books as a kind of friendship shorthand, that it was possible to hand someone an index card with the titles of my favorite books on it and have them check off the ones they like. "Like this, like this, don't like that." "Two out of three--Great! We can be friends. The kind that go to happy hour together, but not the kind that chooses each other as godparents to our children."

Or else take out a very bookish personal ad:

SAHM, 30ish, seeks BFF who likes Dorothy Parker, Sinclair Lewis, Raymond Carver's "Cathedral," and the nonracist parts of Gone with the Wind. Crying over Sara Teasdale is discouraged as a sign of insipidness; crying over Edna St. Vincent Millay is perfectly understandable as that shit is sad and moving. Bonus points if you prefer Gaskell to Austen. Must love Anne.


What would your personal ad look like? Could we be friends?