Philippa Stevenson: Writing the book on borrowing

I'm teetering on the brink of buying a notebook in which to write book titles and whom I've lent them to or borrowed them from.

I even noticed some months ago that there are ready-made notebooks for this purpose. It's haunted me ever since. Clearly, I'm not alone.

Actually, I know I'm not because my mother started recording her book loans some years ago. But following her common-sense example seemed more than practical: it seemed practically an admission that I could be a certain age. The sort of age when you forget your loans or borrowings.

And what do you do with the noted names? Ring your friends and berate them when they haven't returned the book? I could end up knowing exactly where my books are but still not be able to retrieve them. I could know just who to feel guilty about for not returning their books.

While contemplating this decision minefield I've researched the fraught field of book lending and borrowing.

When I raised the topic with a good friend with whom I've exchanged many books (though I'm probably the greater borrower), she unearthed a crumpled copy of an old Time magazine article by columnist Roger Rosenblatt entitled "Would you mind if I borrowed this book?"

It tells of the horrifying prospect of friends closing in on his treasured volumes, and I realised just how good a friend my book-lending mate is. She adheres to its sentiment but lends me books anyway. But then so do I.

"Of all the terrifying circumstances to which one's home is vulnerable, nothing equals that of a guest who stares straight at one's bookshelves," Rosenblatt wrote. "It is when those eyes stop moving that your heart too stops. The guest's body twitches; his hand floats up to where his eyes have led it. There is nothing to be done. You freeze. He smiles. You hear the question even as it forms: 'Would you mind if I borrowed this book?"'

Such exchanges are unavoidable, says Rosenblatt. "One has books; one has friends; they are bound to meet." But he longs for the day when he has courage to say, yes, he does mind.

He quotes Charles Lamb, who railed: "Your borrowers of books - those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes." But despite the injunction that neither a borrower nor a lender be "for loan oft loses both itself and friend", we are frequently both.

One minute I'm frustrated because I can't find a book I've lent to lord knows who and the next I'm eagerly anticipating passing on a recent read to someone I know will just love it. Like every lender I do it because, as one writer put it, lending books is "an essentially spontaneous act, stemming from an overmastering desire to share a revelation, a delight, a piece of nostalgia with another".

Perhaps the solution is some homespun version of public library rules. If we want to borrow a friend's well-thumbed pot-boiler or their leather-bound first edition, shouldn't we be prepared to sign a gold standard of private book borrowing - the rules clear and universally understood?

If we're not prepared to sign what does that say? That we could be about to put it on the bookshelf with good intentions but, equally, we might keep it so long that, eventually, we believe it's ours?

As Anatole France enjoined us, "never lend books for no one ever returns them; the only books in my library are books that other folks have lent me".

For us all to be on the same page, so to speak, what could a code of book exchange conduct contain?

Despite all the words on the problem, few solutions are offered. The rules put forward tend to start with "all borrowings are to be entered in the borrowing book", landing me back where I started.

Then I came across the Penguin Book of Etiquette by Marion von Adlerstein.

"Try not to prevail on other people for the use of something that belongs to them. Certainly do not make a habit of it," she proclaims.

"If you must borrow something, whether it's a handkerchief, a book or an umbrella, you must return it in good condition as soon as possible. The book must not have the corners of pages turned down or stains from food or drink; it must be in much the same state as it was when it was delivered into your care."

By George, I think Miss von Adlerstein has got it. Now, if only I could remember who lent me her book.