(no subject)

[the_rck]

I rejected a request on BookMooch yesterday. I feel a little bit bad for the moocher but not that much. Her profile states that she's a high school sophomore, and she asked me for a book with explicit male/male stories. When I said no, she told me that her parents were fine with her reading whatever and that she could just walk into a book store and buy it. The latter is true. I have no way of knowing if the former is, and I choose not to risk it. If her parents are okay with it, they can get the book for her. These transactions are publicly recorded. If I sent her the book, anybody who bothered to look could see where it came from and who sent it.

(I do have some sympathy for being a teenager and wanting to read about sex without letting one's parents know, even if they wouldn't disapprove or object. There's a large layer of embarrassment and squick to thinking about sex and one's own parents at the same time, let alone talking to them about what bits of sex interest one or turn one on.)

I've rejected mooch requests before. Once at the request of the moocher who hadn't read the condition notes, once because the moocher had received a bunch of books but hadn't successfully sent a single one in spite of having several pending gives, once because I erroneously thought that I didn't own the book (I sent it when I realized that I did have it). That's four in a bit more than a year, and I think they were all reasonable.

I'm taking a couple of weeks break from mailing out BookMooch stuff, at least until after Delia's birthday. I sent out five books, four of them internationally, on Saturday, and I need a break both for my stress levels (one thing I won't have to worry about in the middle of preparing for Delia's birthday) and my budget.

Of course, the break in shipping means that I'm hesitating to list more books right when I've made the decision to get rid of some things. I seem to have gone off reading romances for a while now, and I've got a large stack of romances taking up space in my bedroom that I don't even want to look at. I'm afraid to get rid of them because they are things that I really *did* want to read and expected to enjoy a lot, but I haven't opened them in months and don't really want to right now. I made myself start one on Sunday (yes, while I was sick). I got halfway into it and realized that, while I liked the characters and enjoyed the style, I didn't want to read a romance. I wanted a the characters and style with the romance as a B or C plotline rather than as the primary story.

I suspect that the Loretta Chase and Laura Kinsale books would get taken fairly rapidly if I did post them. I just hesitate because I might still want to read them some day. My library doesn't own any of them, and I'm not sure how available they are by ILL. Then again, I might never read them, and I am trying to get rid of books that I've had forever and not opened.

::sighs:: I'm also thinking about going through my to-be-read shelf and sorting out the ones that I've started and stalled out on reading. Some of those are good but simply haven't suited my mood at any time when I've looked at the shelf. Some of those have gotten buried under other stuff. Some of them are things I probably won't ever finish and don't care much about. I want to try to finish the things in the first and second categories and get rid of the things in the third category. I'd also like to separate out the manga since it takes a lot less time to finish.

I think I need a separate room for my to-be-read books. Not likely to happen, barring a sudden monetary windfall. I covet a big house (and money to pay people to help me keep it up) because I want a huge, dedicated library, a space for nothing but books and spending time with books.

Comments

[kyrielle]

You could donate them to the library, instead, perhaps? If they were interested in adding them to the collection, it would leave the possibility of reading them in the future, wtihout having to keep them in the meanwhile. (I have sometimes asked my library if they will add a donation to the collection, specifying that I will only donate the book if they will; they seem to be fine with that. Of course, the book in question was a new young adult fantasy by a popular author, and they didn't have a copy yet.)

[the_rck]

The last I knew (several years ago), the library didn't add donations to the collection. Instead, they get funneled into a book sale run by the Friends of the Library. The books I've got here are somewhat battered paperbacks.

So, I don't know. I suppose I could check the website to see if the policy has changed.

[jillfelice.livejournal.com]

Just out of curiousity, what was the book?

I had a different type of experience. I was Nicola's and one of the workers told me that he lets his daughter (12 at the time) read whatever she wants. Then he mentioned in the course of the conversation Laurell Hamilton books. And I was kind of amazed. He'd never read them, but they are pretty straight porn.

[the_rck]

It was The Flesh and the Word 4, an anthology of gay erotic stories. If I'm recalling correctly, it's more specifically erotic memoirs.

Laurell K. Hamilton's books scare me.

[slyon.livejournal.com]

I had the same quandry when I listed an erotic art book there. I thought I'd have to be very careful who I sent it to, but it went to the one person who'd already had it on his wishlist, who was clearly into art photography and had been on both sides of bookmooch transactions hundreds of times before. I was worried I'd get some HUR HUR BOOBIEZ teenage kid.

[the_rck]

I've been afraid of that as I've gotten rid of a variety of anthologies of erotica. I guess now I have a policy for myself.

I do figure, though, that if I don't know that someone's under 18, I shouldn't worry about it too much. Generally speaking, unless they tell me, there's no way I could know. BookMooch doesn't, to my knowledge, have age verification of any sort (and why should it?) and doesn't check in any way to make sure people don't lie in their profiles. One needs a valid e-mail address, a valid mailing address and to carry through on sending the books one promises and to acknowledge receiving what one requests. Beyond that... There's no way to do it reasonably.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

From my perspective, your basement feels rather like a dedicated library, a (relatively huge) space for books and spending time with books. Having a bed down there doesn't make it less good, and may improve the space.

I want to be very clear that I think you don't have any obligation to give your books to anybody. Joining BookMooch is not like setting up a store or library open to the public, and I don't think it should be. But I'm curious about the limits of your discomfort.

I rejected a request on BookMooch yesterday. I feel a little bit bad for the moocher but not that much. Her profile states that she's a high school sophomore, and she asked me for a book with explicit male/male stories.

Do you think you would you rejected a request from a high school girl who wanted a book with explicit het stories? Or are explicit het stories so much closer to mainstream acceptability that it wouldn't seem so dangerous?

[the_rck]

I think that I would have rejected a request from a high schooler of either sex for a book of erotica of whatever type. If I knew they were a high schooler.

A book with some sex but a lot of other stuff, I'd worry less about. Those can be found in any library, and any parents that're worried about that level of stuff probably wouldn't let their kids use BookMooch at all.

It's not so much that I'm against teenagers reading about sex. They're going to do it. I'm concerned about having their parents come after me for knowingly providing it to them.

[the_rck]

A further clarification-- If the request had come from a teenage boy, I'd have felt worse about saying no but still would have. I might have offered a different reason on the public record for the rejection so that he'd later have the option of omitting to mention his age in his profile. I don't know, but I suspect that I'd have been influenced by the fact that the address was a town in the midwest that I've never heard of.

I have some sympathy for teens being curious about sex of any type, in general. I just get cranky when they're stupid about it and don't consider how what they're doing affects other people. I have a lot more sympathy for kids who're realizing that they've got some level of same sex attraction (or who know that they do) and can't find books that show what they're experiencing. I still get cranky when they don't think about other people (as teenagers often don't) but understand the desperation more.

Does that make sense?