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07-10-2006, 11:55 AM

Shawnee
You are a kindred spirit . I am the sort of person who wakes up panting at night remembering that so-and-so has still not remembered to give me back that tatty paperback about the reproductive cycle of the humming-bird . I harbour murderous thoughts into the dawn , and worry myself sick about how to ask for it back politely .

But I have had to change recently .

I am moving from Europe to the Caribbean , and I simply cannot afford to take my thousands of books with me . I have thinned my library , and I am giving the rest away . I am giving them away carefully , thinking about my friends' tastes . I put my books into letterboxes . I sent one book to a journalist who had mentioned in an article that he collected the French Guides Bleus .

The amount of goodwill and warmth I have received as a result is quite extraordinary , and yet I thought I would suffer . I am not suffering at all , on the contrary .

( My generosity has its limits of course . NO-ONE will be getting their hands on my complete Gibbon for example . )

07-10-2006, 11:55 AM	#20
Buddug Guest Posts: n/a	Shawnee You are a kindred spirit . I am the sort of person who wakes up panting at night remembering that so-and-so has still not remembered to give me back that tatty paperback about the reproductive cycle of the humming-bird . I harbour murderous thoughts into the dawn , and worry myself sick about how to ask for it back politely . But I have had to change recently . I am moving from Europe to the Caribbean , and I simply cannot afford to take my thousands of books with me . I have thinned my library , and I am giving the rest away . I am giving them away carefully , thinking about my friends' tastes . I put my books into letterboxes . I sent one book to a journalist who had mentioned in an article that he collected the French Guides Bleus . The amount of goodwill and warmth I have received as a result is quite extraordinary , and yet I thought I would suffer . I am not suffering at all , on the contrary . ( My generosity has its limits of course . NO-ONE will be getting their hands on my complete Gibbon for example . )