BTT: Confessions of a Book Pusher

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?

Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!

I’ll borrow from anyone and ususally return the books safe and sound, in a timely manner.

I tend to be a book pusher, more than a book borrower. I tend to lend even when I think, in retro, the lendee isn’t as excited as I am about the reader-book match made in heaven that I have conceived of.  I have a tendency to say, “Oh! You’ll love this book!” and then over do it a bit.

My director just asked if I’d read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and did I think it was any good? Oh, did I! The next day, I proudly, like a kitten dropping some weird dead thing, plopped all three giant, worn, 500lb ARC’s in the Millenium Trilogy into her lap. She looked a little bit scared and asked if she could read the first and get back to me if it was her thing.

Our Best Man, Kai’s God-Daddy, was going on a summer-long concert-following road trip, a few years ago, and asked if he could peruse my shelves for reading material. I sent him packing with a stack that would have made me a little queasy. “Uh, Pam, none of these are like that time you said I’d love Foucault’s Pendulum, right?” Oops.

Ok, so, maybe I’m not a very good book lender but it’s because I’m a fanatical book borrower. If someone lends me a Nicholas Sparks or horror-based YA, neither of which I’d read or even pick up from the library on my own free will, I’ll read ‘um in a heart beat. I think, for me, when you lend a book or borrow a book, you’re giving or taking (respectively) a little bit of the reader. There’s a reason we connect enough with certain books that we require other people to read them.

That said, I’m not a total bull in a china shop. I really do try to lend Mockingjay to my sister-in-law who’s read the first three Collin’s books. I do try to ask people if they’ have any interest before I thrust books on them. But sometimes just sometimes, I still pedal Hesse or large stacks of trilogies to people who I think might just need to give them a try.