Feature Follow Friday ~ August 12, 2016

Feature & Follow is a blog hop hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read. The goal of Feature & Follow is to meet new bloggers, make friends, and gain readers.

My Book Betrayal Story

I thought I had talked about my worst book betrayal before, but I guess not? I can’t seem to find any trace of it.

When I started my elementary teaching block my professor assigned us to read The Hunger Games to kick start a semester-long project. We spent our days in the classrooms with our kids as well as meeting with together as baby teachers.

When I read the book, I took notes in the margins because we had to create a lesson plan in our subject area. It was like one lesson in a novel unit study. Except then we had to create a series of individual lessons. Then we had to create an entire unit – all based in our subject area. After our unit was done, we had to pair up with our respective counter part (language arts/social studies and math/science) to create a unit that was cross-curricular. After all that was done, our final step was to match up with an opposite pair and create a unit that worked seamlessly for all four subject areas. It was months of long, detailed work.

This was right around the time that The Hunger Games was really taking off. It was the fall of 2011. After I had finished reading the book, my friend – I’ll call her Purple Eyeshadow, which I use in several ways to talk to my kids each year about real friendships – asked to borrow my copy. She wasn’t as avid a book reader as I was, but she was a groupie. You know, the ones that follow all the trends and only read the popular books? Yeah…she was a die-hard Twilight fan.

It was probably the end of September when I lent her the book. I remember only because we had to read the book first thing for the semester and I started asking her around Halloween for it back.

She had a propensity for being a total hot mess, going back and forth between university and home, always leaving things behind. At first I thought nothing of her not returning it – she probably had it hiding in a basket of laundry stuffed under her bed behind her craft box.

Then October wore into November and I needed my copy with all of my stickies and notes in the margins back for my final exam.

After putting me off for over a month she finally admitted she had lent it to someone else – a coworker of her mother’s – and was never getting it back. She said she’d buy me a new one. Weeks later, right before we left for Christmas. She bought a used copy at Half Price. The cover was all jacked up.

I was livid.

SHE GAVE AWAY MY TEACHING BOOK! WITH ALL MY NOTES!

Later I sublet her apartment for the summer and cleaned out her room. She had two chinchillas and a cat that she did not clean up after. Again, hot mess. I found books, movies, and clothes that a mutual friend had lent her that she never intended to return. I boxed it all up and took it to the friend, who thanked me profusely.

I decided then and there to never lend books to anyone again. I have only lent one book to a very close friend who can’t lose my book because she lives six houses down the street and knows I’ll break into her house and take it back.

 

 

What is your book betrayal story?