Last Sunday Salon Angus, from Book Rhapsody, talked
about borrowing and before that I talked about book sales and how a book is not
a sacred thing, although it should be taken care off. In general, the topic of
passing around books was in the air. Right now the library of my institute is
giving away a bunch of old books and I scored this beauty:
Isn't it beautiful? is very old, and you can see the work and love that was put on this book :).
However, today my Google alert gave me a link to a beautiful story about really giving away your books. I've never done this you see, I've never really donated a book, and the reasons are exactly the same a lot of people have for not lending books: you want to know that this book that gave you so much is going to be well taken care of; that someone is going to read it, bring the story back to life again.
The closest I've been to giving away books was when I
moved out of my country; for obvious reasons I could not just keep all of my
books, so I gave them to people in my family, to friends. I sold a couple of
text books (calculus and the sort) but even then, I had to keep one of my
Biochemistry books with me, I just had to.
I've been the lucky one, the one on the other side,
getting people giving me books, either intentionally or not. Once I was walking
on the street and there was a box full of books to give away, no one was taking
care of them, they were there for the grab. I could've taken the whole box, but
at the same time I told myself, you are not interested in all of this books,
you should just choose some and let someone else have the rest.
I did think about having a little free library in
front of my house; I loved the idea of sharing some of the books I already read
and that I know won't be read again. But you have to remember that I am still
an student, there is a reason why when I buy books is at the library sale at 1
dollar each. But believe me, once I have an actual paycheck, this is one of the
"giving back" things that I am going to do.
Other than that it has been a nice week, I managed to post 2 reviews: The Guinea Pig Diaries and The Mystery of the Tanias. Both books that I read during this years Read-a-Thon.
