Shakespeare & Co | Artist: Ray Hartl

On Thursday, November 18th, Booking through Thursday asked:

Who would you rather borrow from? Your library? Or a Friend?

(Or don’t your friends trust you to return their books?)

And, DO you return books you borrow?

I could not begin to tell you what diet pills really work but I can tell you that my friends and I share books all the time. What I like about this is that we’re generally lending or borrowing books that we like – they come with the Friend Seal of Approval. What I don’t like is that I have a dog who sometimes steals books and gnaws on them, and I live in terror that he’ll do this with someone else’s books.
Most of my friends are good about returning the books I want back, and passing on to others the books I enjoyed, but have no need to re-read.

As to libraries…as a child, the public library was one of my favorite places on earth. In one town, the librarian often had several of us kids over to play at his house, with his girlfriend’s son (it was the 70’s…hanging with the librarian or your preschool teacher wasn’t alarming, then). As a young adult, I also frequented the library, often with my mother, later with my husband, but he’s so bad about returning books that it’s expensive and embarrassing.

Also, our local library is pretty awful. Oh, I mean, it’s pretty, and there’s free coffee and a bunch of comfy chairs, but the collection is appallingly bad in the branch near our neighborhood, and the main branch smells like old people, and not in a “I love you, Grandma, you smell like roses” way, but in a “this could be a really bad nursing home” sort of way, and it’s dark, and has miles of empty shelves, and it’s just too SAD to go there.

And, in truth, I get enough quiet working at home as a writer, so when I go out I don’t want to go to a place where anyone thinks they have a right to shush me. Bookstore-cafes, where there are lively discussions and froufrou espresso drinks are MUCH more my style.