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Never Lend Books

Written by Jason Bellows on 06 November 2005

Jacques Anatole François Thibault, AKA Anatole France, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921, once said “Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent to me.”

Seems like good advice, but advice I am incapable of heeding. I’m too attached to my books. I love them enough that I want to share them, and I want to get them back. It’s literary greed, and I know it.

Were I the altruist my noblest intentions persuade me to be, I would surrender my books to an interesting quest like that of Bookcrossing.com. It’s an attempt to allow anyone to share in the opulence that is a good book. The scheme is the take a good and trusted tome, label, place it in a public location, and log it in the site. Once the book is found the label therein will allow the finder to look up WHY it was left, and to potentially join in the organization.

It could be a fascinating chance to be exposed to new flavors of thought at a reasonable expense–ideally only to do the same for someone else in kind.

An interesting prospect, to be sure. But I have yet to get a firsthand testimonial of its benefits.

Book Crossing Website


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#1 jimboy753 22 June 2006 at 03:56 pm

i don’t see why people can’t be allowed to eat the flesh of other people, because so many people can’t afford to cremate, or bury the dead. i feel like that the usa should make cannibalism legal. look at it this way human flesh is meat, and meat is food so tell me why we shouldn’t be able to eat our own kind.i think what we should do is to try to get cannibalism legal. what would you do if you had a sister who wanted to be eaten, wouldn’t you want to eat her flesh, the reason i asked this is because my younger sister wants me to eat her flesh. thank you

#2 thathybridguy 20 August 2006 at 01:29 am

what in the mother of all that i natural is Jim boy over here talking about?!

Im sure that eating human may be interesting for some but is a prospect that, most definately, is shunned by, well, EVERYONE else.

Lets hope hes just joshing arouns. If not….

#3 Drakvil 04 January 2007 at 07:01 pm

While it sounds like a fantastic idea, I have worries about the poor books once they are out there all alone in the world. (Can you tell I’m a book lover yet?) I can see unscrupulous or homeless people taking the books and selling them at used book stores after ripping the bookcrossing labeled pages out, or just that someone will keep the book captive and not let it free again.

While Jimboy doesn’t seem able to be able to tell the difference between Hufu and books, there’s a lot of good reasons why cannibalism is illegal. Among them are 1) Easy way to dispose of a murder victim and get rid of the evidence, 2) people would start to murder others just for food, 3) pretty much any disease the meal had in life is now yours to enjoy, 4) people with extreme fetishes about being consumed wouldn’t be receiving the mental health care they needed if people’s first inclination was to just do what they wanted and eat them.

Then again, maybe he posted on this topic and not the appropriate one is that he was confusing cannibal with cannabis.

#4 a1c 09 August 2008 at 07:18 pm

Vote for Ayn Rand, people are selfish and inconsiderate by nature.

#5 Wuzzle 10 August 2008 at 05:37 am

jimboy753 said: “i don’t see why people can’t be allowed to eat the flesh of other people, because so many people can’t afford to cremate, or bury the dead. i feel like that the usa should make cannibalism legal. look at it this way human flesh is meat, and meat is food so tell me why we shouldn’t be able to eat our own kind.i think what we should do is to try to get cannibalism legal. what would you do if you had a sister who wanted to be eaten, wouldn’t you want to eat her flesh, the reason i asked this is because my younger sister wants me to eat her flesh. thank you”

Dot dot dot … I pray that you aren’t serious. Besides the above mentioned factors, canabalism is simply F-d up!!!!!

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