About time. I had owned the book for a long time and it was lost on the shelf. Bringing it back had occurred to me before, it just had to happen. I didn’t want to risk actually losing it.
There was a note on the cover with an address and phone number, so I texted the man for an appointment. He called it “thoughtful,” although I thought shame was more appropriate since it had been over a year since he loaned it to me. There was no reason to keep it.
“Apologies,” I said when I returned it, “to be honest, I didn’t even read it. Just didn’t get around to it.”
The well-known story. On my bedside table there are about ten works that still need to be read and a book that someone lends or recommends to me ends up at the bottom of that pile quite quickly. Although it could be worse. A colleague has no fewer than 55 titles waiting next to his bed.
The man from the book and his partner nodded. Recognizable. They also lagged behind in reading while purchasing.
“Then you are in a bookstore,” the man said, “and then you think: interesting or fun and I must have this and at home you start right away and then something else comes along.”
We didn’t know each other, but a pleasant, albeit short, conversation ensued, because I was there on time. It was about writing and the more than five hundred year old courtyard where they lived, where very strange things have happened.
A book had been written about that courtyard and I got that and another children’s book and so yes, I returned one book, but left with two new ones .