Musing Monday

Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about lending books...

A few weeks back we had a question about borrowing books, this week I was wondering what your policy was on lending books. Do you lend books to anyone? Just friends? Only big readers? How long are they allowed to have them?

For the most part, I'm fairly laid-back when it comes to loaning out my books. Typically, I only loan to family and close friends. As a rule, I don't loan books to people I work with. I don't normally have a time limit for people to return books, so I try to keep a list of who has what book.

All the books I loan out have a bookplate with my name and address. My thinking is this will make it easier for the loanee to remember to return the book.

Like most other people, I have lent books in the past which never got returned. The friend from work who borrowed the first 3 Left Behind books - she quit her job and never returned the books. I called her several times, but to no avail.

Because I categorize my books into 2 groups - books I will keep forever and review copies I don't necessarily want to keep, I usually tell the loanee which category a book is in. I also remind the loanee not to mark in my books or dog-ear the pages - I hate when people dog-ear the pages of books!

Of course, I do have a few books that I will not loan out to anyone. First edition copies of older books and books I have had personally autographed. These types of books hold a place of honor in my home library, so I keep them close to me - I don't want to take the chance they won't be returned or that they may become damaged.

Monday Musings

This week's Monday Musings is all about the treatment of books.

"Do you treat books carefully, or do you just reat them as any other object? Do you have certain things you refuse o do with books (write in them, etc.)? If so, what are they?"

I love books! I have loved them since I was a little girl. When I was growing up my family didn't have a lot of money, so I didn't own very many books. But the books I did own were precious to me. I treated them with respect and I cared for them much better than I did my toys.

My granny always told me to never, ever dog-ear the pages of a book and this is something I adhered strongly to. When I became a mother, this was also a lesson I taught me 3 girls. To me, dog-earing a book is as disrespectful as spitting in someone's face! (Well, maybe not that harsh, but it is something that makes me angry).

Now that I'm older, my home library has grown by leaps and bounds. I have bookshelf after bookshelf full of wonderful books. I keep bookmarks in every room of my house, plus I also use those dang inserts from magazines as book marks (they're made of cardboard, so they work nicely).

I don't write in the majority of my books unless it is an inscription of who bought me the book or when I received it. I also have many autographed books. I do have a tendency to write in "self-help" books or in text books that are my own - this helps me if I'm studying something new. Other than that, I never write in a book.

I try very hard to keep the book jackets with the books, but sometimes this is hard, especially if it is a book that I like to reread. In that case, I'll take the book to my public library and have them laminate the jacket cover - just like they do for library books. This keeps the cover nice and clean and I don't have to worry about tearing the cover every time I reread a book.

When it comes to checking books out of the library, I try to follow the same rules as with my own books. I always use a bookmark and I never dog-ear the pages. It makes me so mad to check out a book and find half the pages have been dog-eared at one time or another. I would also never think of writing in a library book, or any one else's book.

Books have always been my friends, so they deserve the same kindness and consideration that I would give to a living friend. Books are our legacy and they will endure long after I have left this world.