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Observations

Borrowling Books

Lingamish has just posted an interesting piece on CS Lewis and Bible translation. It’s a nice ‘Sunday afternoon ramble’ of a piece, meandering around a number of interesting subjects. I was particularly struck by this paragraph.

Did you know that book theft is not a crime?  By borrowing a book you actually help your friends free up space on their bookshelf for other books.  The general rule is that if a book is not next to a friend’s easy chair, sitting on his bedside table or in fact in his hands being read at that very moment it is fine for you to borrow the book.  Not only are you freeing your friend to buy more books, but you are also increasing cohesion within your social network through lending behaviour.  Any anthropologist would tell you that is a good thing.

Having just received a big box from Amazon yesterday and having no idea where to put the books, there strikes me as some real wisdom in this point of view. That being said, if anyone reading this has my copy of Leadership on the Other Side I would like it back, thanks!

One reply on “Borrowling Books”

Wouldn’t it be great if you could return the books when you’ve read them, like they do with their DVD rental. Then you could borrow others. Actually to make it easier, they could have buildings where you can go and look at the books before you borrow them. You could use a good old latin name for them and call them “libraries”.

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