Contemplation of a new policy...

Mar 10, 2007 21:17

I love sharing books with my friends. I like to have them read things that I like so that we can talk about them and think about them. And I like to share crappy books with my friends too, either crappy books that I have a shameful liking for, or crappy books that I recommend up front so that once the friend reads it and is talking about how much it sucked, I can say "HA! There is another person on this earth who has lost hours of their life to the same craptasm I got suckered in to!" (Note that the latter doesn't happen very often, and usually not until I know you well enough to have established that you will find this entertaining.)

However...

...I am seriously thinking about refusing to loan out books any more, after having had to replace/having been made aware that I am going to have to replace a stupid number of books that I have loaned out to people, now that I am trying to collect them again since we are moving. It irritates me to no end, especially when the people insist that they have returned the book or that I never loaned it to them in the first place. While I realize that they may honestly just not remember, I do. I have a memory for the location of my books--my fiction books in particular--that is like a steel trap, or titanium even, and if I say you have a book of mine, you have it somewhere. And I appreciate even less being misinformed that you have returned my book to me, and reluctantly purchasing a replacement for it in the face of your firm denial of its status in your custody, and then having the original copy returned to me long after I had given up on it and discarded the receipt for the replacement. Because I tend to anthropomorphize my possessions to a somewhat embarrassing degree, and when I have the original that you read and held in your hands and discovered and loved sitting on the shelf next to the hopeful replacement, which just wants a chance to be similarly read and enjoyed and made part of the big dysfunctional book family, and which will have to be returned if it can be or sent along to the library if not, not only am I probably out the cost of the replacement, but I have also got to disappoint one of these two books by removing it from my collection. And that is abjectly unacceptable.

On the other hand, I like borrowing books from people, so I suppose that if I want to be able to do it in the future, I will have to suck it up and prepare to reciprocate, and to face the loss of the occasional volume. Or nine, as the tally currently stands. (Not counting the stuff you have, buzzermccain; I'm not worried about what you've got, since I intend to come over and bring you back a whole bunch of stuff, and help you check for mine.) :) However, I would like to comment that I do NOT integrate borrowed books from other people into my own collection, intentionally or otherwise; I keep a special shelf for them, and though it sometimes takes me a while to get it back, it will be returned, and often in better condition than when it arrived. *sniff*

...In other news, I found a BAD ASS job for Jeremy that is right in the town I want to live in, 10 minutes up the road from where I will be working. Not going to post about it now because I don't want to jinx anything, but it's as close to his ideal job as he is going to get in the area. Except possibly for the pay, which is not posted on the website, but even if it is only $25k that would not be perfect but would be OK, we could live on our two incomes, and I get benefits through my work so if it doesn't offer those, that would be ok too. He is going to get right on applying for it, and we are going to check out the place incognito while we are up there. More updates as they come along. We leave for Maryland at the ass crack of dawn tomorrow, with--as unforth has commented--the worst-timed Daylight Savings time switch imaginable. Blargh.
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