What Book Would You Never Let Someone Borrow?
The other day, I saw the question: “What book would you never let someone borrow?”
I loved this question, but I wanted more than one answer for you. So I invited my mother to give me a book too! My mom is an incredible author in her own right (she wrote the amazing Living and Dying Without a Map), and you can hear from both of us below.
Don’t forget to leave a comment with the book you would never let someone borrow too!
Emma
I am an inveterate book giver and lender. When I love a book, I want others to read it and I am always happy to be the one to share those books. I have been known to buy the same book 2 or 3 times just so I can give it away when the right person comes along.
There is only one book I would never let anyone borrow and that is my copy of Bloomability by Sharon Creech.
Bloomability is an incredible book about a 13 year old American girl who gets “kidnapped” by her uncle (with her parent’s permission) and ends up attending an idyllic international school in Switzerland where the kids go on ski trips in the Alps, learn foreign languages, process being teenagers, quote Ralph Waldo Emerson and Robert Frost, talk about changing the world and never do anything more scandalous than stay up past curfew with a towel at the door.
Bloomability shook my preteen soul in a way no book had before, and no book has since. It feels cliche to say it, but this book truly and completely changed my life. I have read it so many times that these characters are my friends, and I love them like family.
In the beginning, it showed me that even though I didn’t feel comfortable with my peers at school, there was a place I could fit in somewhere out there if I just looked hard enough. In the end, it brought me to the United World Colleges where I too ended up going to an international boarding school. We didn’t ski the Alps, but we did talk about changing the world, learn foreign languages, process being teenagers and did plenty of things more scandalous than staying up past curfew. I wouldn’t have found that special place without the help of Sharon Creech.
My copy has traveled with me everywhere I have ever lived, and it is about as close as you can get to my most treasured object. About half of it is falling out, and as you can see, a 13 year old me got extremely excited about gel pens and peeling the silver foil off gum wrappers (remember that!). I love this copy because I love what it says about who I was and how this book shaped me.
If you have ever been or known a preteen girl who just doesn’t fit in, you need this book.
But you can’t have my copy.
Nancy
When Emma asked me “what book would I never loan out?”, I realized that I, indeed, not only have a book I want to both keep AND loan out, one I just purchased FOUR copies of it so that I could have a copy to never loan out and a few more to give away!
I read the library copy of this beautiful book a few months ago, before the 16 hours of daylight of the summer months eclipsed so many pleasurable reading hours but after we were well into the despairing days of 2020. This novel, told from the view of a 65 year old man reflects on the period of his life as a young man, shortly after the death of his mother. At a loss for what to do and in need of escape from the expectation that he would go to seminary, he lands in a small village in Ireland to stay with his grandparents. Williams navigates the tender places in the young man’s heart with such grace while he also takes the reader on a deep and privileged journey into the life of the village on the cusp of change.
Having lived in an island community myself for 30 years, which has experienced profound changes over that time, I often found myself relating to some of the unique characters described. His descriptions are often filled with humor and are at the same time poignant. As a reader, I often felt tears in my eyes alongside a deep sense of joy of recognition of the human experience of love, loss, acceptance, and resilience. Williams tells the story with long meandering sentences which gave me the soothing feeling of walking along a quiet country road and seeing every detail with my eyes and heart. Somehow the book felt like palliative care to my heart during a time when I most needed it.
After returning it to the library, I immediately ordered four copies from my local bookstore, Lopez Bookshop, so that I could own a copy that I can re-read and underline passages that moved me.
The other three will go to friends who have patiently listened to me while I endlessly talked about “this incredibly beautiful book I am reading”!
I hope you all had a great week, and that you enjoyed this blog post. We will be back next week with more!
