Lent and lost books
Friday night, I didn’t sleep well and woke up in the middle of the night, or very early in the morning, depending on your perspective. I started to think of books I’ve lent out and will never see again…
This thought, of lent (books, not the liturgical season) and lost books, pops into my head sometimes. I want those books back, though most of them are probably gone for good. It grieves me to think of the ones that I lent out to some unappreciative friend (or former friend, as the case may be), some person who really doesn’t care about books, and who will never give them, who probably doesn’t even have them anymore.
I can think of one bag I lent to a particularly loathsome individual. It was filled with mystery books, Elizabeth George and Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, GK Chesterton’s Father Brown books, some novels, Faulkner and Hemingway, maybe a Flannery O’Connor or two. I imagine this bag of books was never looked through then, and was probably eventually thrown out or given away at some point.
Another bag was given to a friend who “was thinking” of converting to Catholicism, though, when I think about now, I’m guessing that was never true. That bag had a copy of Paul Elie’s The Life you Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage, Thomas Merton’s The Seven Story Mountain, Dorothy Day’s The Long Loneliness, among other really wonderful books that I miss.
If you don’t like books then you probably think I’m being petty. If you do like books, well then, you understand.
Someone should start a business, a detective business, searching for lent and lost books. It could be called The Book Detective. The intake Form might look like this:
The Book Detective Intake Form
Name (yours not the book’s)_________________________________________________
phone number ______________ email address ________________
Lendee _________________________________________________
Contact info _____________________________________________
Title (s) and author(s) of lost book(s):
1.________________________________________________________
2.________________________________________________________
3.________________________________________________________
4.________________________________________________________
5.________________________________________________________
Please use separate page for additional titles for this lendee
Please use separate page for additional lendees
Was it clearly stated at time of loan that books were on loan? yes/no
Are you willing to offer lendee a monetary sum for return of books? yes/no
If yes, how much __________________________________________
Is the Book Detective authorized to use force to recover the books? yes/no
If yes,
verbal? yes/no
blackmail? yes/no
physical? yes/no
deadly? yes/no
Of course, one might say that it would be easier to buy a new copy of the books that you’ve lost, but what if they are out of print? What if you made notes in your copies? What if that particular copy was given to you by your great aunt Bertha right before she died? These are times when The Book Detective would be most needed. Right?