I used to lend my books all the time when I was a teenager.
I had an incident when I lent my “Goblet of Fire” to a friend of mine who was an year older than me in school.
She took forever to give it back, and when she did, the whole binding of the book was broken, the pages were coming out. Thankfully, no pages were missing, but my heart broke when I saw my book.
I never lent anyone books again for a long time. Now, I have two people in my life whom I trust with my books and lend them to. Otherwise, I never ever trust anyone.
by Ar_space_tpk96
11 Comments
One I never back and another had the binding almost completely destroyed. Never lent out books since.
I lend “The Three Musketeers” to a friend and she never gave it back. We lost contact short after that.
It used to be one of my favorite books growing up and it was an old copy. That was the last time I lend someone a book I loved.
I gave a book to a friend, she moved to a faraway land, we never saw each other again and the book got lost.
I had brought Korean editions of Harry Potter when I immigrated to the states and I lent out the first ones to my mom’s boss’s wife who returned them with the binding broken and pages falling out. Doubly annoying since they’re hard to replace from America.
I lent my entire Howl’s Moving Castle collection to a friend in the 8th grade. I asked for them back for months and she always dodged the question. They had a garage sale that summer and I walked over to it and my collection was sitting there with a $5 sticker on it. I stole them.
My husband and his siblings went to high school with my brother and me, and we all knew each other. At some point, my BIL loaned my brother his old (not first edition, but early) copy of the Hobbit. My brother just found and returned it a few months ago. My BIL graduated from high school in 1998. Luckily, despite many moves, parties, a roommate with a poorly-behaved dog, and my brother now having four rambunctious sons, the book was still in good shape. But being missing for 25+ years was less than ideal.
Someone put my book on a fishing hook, so they put a whole through the cover.
I no longer lend books to anyone because to many have never been returned.
About ten years ago I loaned one of my copies of Arabian Nights to a friend. He had to move, and when he packed his stuff up the book ended up at the bottom of a bag which got drug from the apartment to the car. Which meant the book got drug across concrete and sanded down a corner of the book about a half an inch.
The book was still readable, and he bought me a new one besides, but I was not best pleased to have it happen, and he knew it.
The worst part about not getting a book back is when they didn’t even read it.
I lent a book to a coworker, and it took over two years to get it back. I would have just let it go, but it was signed by the author. I’m never doing that again.