Summer Lesson #4: Never borrow books from anyone you want to remain friends with.

I'm reading a book right now that was lent to me by a friend who is a one of those people. You know those people, the sort of people who cannot read a book once the spine of it has been broken, the sort of people who have can't be friends with someone who dog-ears pages*. These people are the true Book Enthusiasts among us, because they care just as much about the state of the book itself as they do about the story the book holds. Me, I am not a book enthusiast. I don't care if the pages of the book I'm reading have been replaced with bits of used toilet paper, because it's the story I'm after. And because I don't care, I am terrified by the people who do care, because a Book Enthusiast will inevitably be someone whom I a) want to be friends with and b) has a pristine collection of books I really want to read and can't find at the library.



In order for a non-Book Enthusiast and a Book Enthusiast to remain friends, it is crucial that they never ever discuss books. A conversation about books will always lead to a conversation about books that the B.E. has that the non-B.E. should read, and then, as a show of true friendship, the B.E. will try to force one of these books upon the non-B.E. But before this happens, the Book Enthusiast will tell a story about that one time where someone got butter on page 56 of their copy of The Return of the King and how that person is now a friendless low-life who lives in the gutter eating scraps of buttered paper to survive (the irony!)**. The Book Enthusiast will chuckle over this book destroyer's much-deserved piece of misfortune. Then the BE will turn to you and say "so do you want to borrow my first-edition signed copy of The Jungle Book? I'll lend you a pair of the specially designed forceps I use to turn the pages."

A great many of my friends are Book Enthusiasts, which means that a great deal of my friendships are founded on my determined refusal to borrow books from anyone. To me, being lent a book on the condition that I won't accidentally open it too far is like being lent a pair of shoes on the condition that I won't get any outside dirt on the soles***, or being given a chocolate bar and being told I can eat it so long as I don't damage the wrapper it comes in.

So now I have this copy of Dress Your family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris that I am terrified to let out of my sight. Not only was this book lent to me by someone who cares deeply about the condition his books are in, but the book isn't even his; it's his mother's. This means there will be two generations of people who will watch my impending demise with satisfying glee if harm comes to this book. I should have refused. I should have politely declined the offer. I should have emphatically described all of the terrible things that could easily happen to this book once it entered my possession. But it was right there and I very much want to read it. Now, nothing bad has happened to this book, but that's done nothing to reassure me. Luckily, I'm assuming that the book lender doesn't frequent this blog, so he can relax with the misguided notion that books are as safe in my house as they are in his.

My house is like a mine-field. There is absolutely no room in this house that is safe for this book because there is no room in this house that my family doesn't go into. The rooms that people enter are often strewn with matches, grease-covered engine parts, vats of chocolate cake batter, and muddy cats. The rooms that my family don't frequent are even worse, though, because those are the places where we shove things. We don't even look into these rooms, we just open the doors and toss in all manner of heavy, pointy, dirty objects. As a last resort, I've been keeping the book in the living room, which is the Nice Room where we put the 'nice' furniture and where the cats are not allowed to enter. Unfortunately, this is also the room where we spray sealants on decoupaged chairs when it's too cold to do it outside, not to mention the room where we try to keep things tidy by taking everything that is deemed 'clutter', which generally includes a large quantity of books, and shoving them behind the couch when we have company over.


*Personally I don't get dog-earing (yes, that's a word) either. I tried it once and found it to be completely ineffective as a means of marking what page I was on.

**A friend of mine once lent her copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Askaban to a girl named Melissa, who dropped it in the bath (a move that even I think was foolish and completely avoidable). For the rest of grade 9 year, no one from our groups of friends spoke to Melissa, and the word 'Melissa' became an adjective for rampant, careless destructive behaviour.

***And if you've ever seen what I can do to a pair of shoes you'd never lend me those either.