The Fate of Books

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bookslover

Puritan Board Doctor
What's the worst thing that's ever happened to a book you owned (aside from loaning it out and never seeing it again)?

When I was in seminary, I accidentally left a textbook in the trunk of my car. Then it rained. I opened the trunk, and there it was - a textbook with soggy, bloated pages! My professor had compassion for me and gave me an extra copy he had for free.

What's your experience?
 
#1 and #3 in this article. I had a Bible and it was unread and unobeyed before God saved me. That's the worst thing to happen to a book in my collection.
 
We once visited some friends at New Year and went out for dinner with them, leaving our dog at their house. When we came back, we discovered that he had devoured a brand new leather study Bible that the wife had received for Christmas. In his defense, it was a Ryrie Study Bible...
 
In my children's first few years of life, they tend to pull books off the shelves and bite them, rip them, play with them, and do other things with them. I'm glad to see them opening good books at a young age though, and I look at those marks on the books with fond memories. Like "Noah, these are your teeth marks on this Surgeon book from when you were a baby." Things like this actually give the books more sentimental value to me.
 
We once visited some friends at New Year and went out for dinner with them, leaving our dog at their house. When we came back, we discovered that he had devoured a brand new leather study Bible that the wife had received for Christmas. In his defense, it was a Ryrie Study Bible...
The dog apparently had better theology than the owners.
 
Once, while preparing to leave from church, I put my Bible on the roof of our van as I strapped the little ones in. I got in and drove off forgetting it was there. About half way home, it dawned on me what I had done. Pulling over, I saw it was no longer there. So I drove back to the church to find it. I found it laying in the road on the way back. Thankfully, our church is in more of a rural area with lite traffic and it wasn't badly damaged. But I upbraided myself for being so absentminded.
 
Spilling a cup of coffee on a prized Puritan reference book. I have also spilled smaller amounts of coffee on other books. Grrrrrrr.
 
Actually, it is a supreme example of God's grace. I was the senior camp staff member present with 90 girls when a severe storm (tornado?) struck in Georgia. Numerous trees came down, but we had no injuries due in part to the quick thinking of several counselors. My platform tent (with 4x4 timbers!) was shredded and everything paper, including my first NASB became a soggy mess from the torrential rains. I held on to those bloated pages for several years, not having the heart to toss my Bible.
 
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Once, while preparing to leave from church, I put my Bible on the roof of our van as I strapped the little ones in. I got in and drove off forgetting it was there. About half way home, it dawned on me what I had done. Pulling over, I saw it was no longer there. So I drove back to the church to find it. I found it laying in the road on the way back. Thankfully, our church is in more of a rural area with lite traffic and it wasn't badly damaged. But I upbraided myself for being so absentminded.
One old pastor I know did this too. Unfortunately, he realized what happened while he was on the highway and after he pulled over, ran around trying to gather up all the pages that had flown everywhere. Too many to piece together, he now has a "bible box" with his beloved bible remains with all the precious notes!
 
I have the sobbest story of all:

I used to have a large theological library. I moved overseas and to a jungle tribe. I did not realize what the jungle did to books. After 6 months I was shocked to see "hollow" books on my shelf.....the hard cover was intact but some now only had empty spaces or half-eaten pages where the termites had done their work. So I had to ziplock any paper I had in my jungle home or it was eaten by bugs.

Then I got sick and had to leave. My manager flew all my books out to the coast, including hundreds of easy-to-read bibles in the national dialect meant for evangelists. Very soon after the house was broken into and all my bibles were stolen (how ironic).

Thus ended my theological library. Like a book-genocide.
 
In college I loaned a book to a professor and never got it back!!! :) Another touch of irony, it was Thomas Sowell's "Vision of the Anointed." Also in college, my car was stolen and I had most all of my text books in the trunk. My gracious grandpa gave me the money to replace them.
 
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Once, while preparing to leave from church, I put my Bible on the roof of our van as I strapped the little ones in. I got in and drove off forgetting it was there.

This happened to us (my father), except that while still driving along, a car came up to us, holding the Bible out of the window. We slowed down, assuming they were going to give it back. But they just sped off - I guess they wanted us to know they had stolen it. We found some interesting juxtaposition in the theft of a Bible.
 
My 2-year-old threw an apologetics book out of the first-floor window into the garden to see what would happen, and didn't mention it till the next day. It was a dirty, soggy mess ... and I hadn't even read it yet.
 
This happened to us (my father), except that while still driving along, a car came up to us, holding the Bible out of the window. We slowed down, assuming they were going to give it back. But they just sped off - I guess they wanted us to know they had stolen it. We found some interesting juxtaposition in the theft of a Bible.
What!! That is wild!
 
I can't top Perg's sad story, but years ago my pup ate up an 80 year old Bible that my mom gave me, which her dad had used while serving as chaplain on the USS Arizona. He happened to be on shore with his briefcase when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

The other minor disaster was when I was an unbelieving farmer. Our tractor radio could only pick up the nearby gospel station. I would listen to J Vernon McGee and Chuck Swindol and decided I'd read the Bible for myself to show their ignorance. In support of that, I bought a big Strong's Concordance. So I had a dog-eared KJV and my new Concordance in my tractor cab for those long, straight-line, disc-plow stretches. (40 minutes one-way). After a week or so of such multitasking, I noticed the Concordance was missing. The window it was next to was slightly open.

Somewhere in a 1000 acre wheat field in Montana lie the remains of a slightly used Strong's, plowed under soil.
 
My 2-year-old threw an apologetics book out of the first-floor window into the garden to see what would happen, and didn't mention it till the next day. It was a dirty, soggy mess ... and I hadn't even read it yet.

Toddlers and books: a deadly combination!
 
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