DEAR Jasminda,
When taking a book from a street library, should you give back a book of equal literary merit or is it okay to swap average books for best-sellers?
Mr Geoff W.
Dear Geoff,
I love the street library concept.
It offers all the best parts of borrowing a book (flicking through titles, locating a classic, the anticipation of lazy Sunday afternoons draped on a chaise with a cat, a cup of tea, and some dog-eared pages … and all of it without the cost of a new book, the fines of a library and the philanthropic joy of giving and receiving during a stroll in your neighbourhood.
Now, to your question.
For a start, literary merit doesn’t always equate to a best seller.
Take this line for example: ‘His voice is warm and husky like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel… or something.”
Dark melted chocolate fudge caramel?
Or something? If a 10-year-old wrote this in their written expression book, they’d be pulled up for starting the sentence in a verbose manner and finishing it by being lazy or unimaginative, and yet this book topped best-seller lists with its combination of cringey writing and a stalking, manipulative protagonist.
I understand where you’re coming from, though.
Is it okay, for example, to swap a pristine copy of Wuthering Heights for a muddy version of Bombproof Your Horse, admittedly an interesting read, but with a very limited prospective audience, or Knitting With Dog Hair: Better a sweater from a dog you know and love than from a sheep you’ll never meet (both real titles, by the way).
I feel that in the same vein as ‘an eye for an eye’, you really should swap a decent book for a decent book, particularly when this free community service has a significant feel-good factor about it.