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Futueteipsum7 t1_j8mkywu wrote

When I was in college a friend of mine stole (yes, I know!) an old Everyman copy of Lord Dunsany’s Book of Wonder from the library: it was a 1920’s oxblood leather-bound copy, beautiful and exciting.

I always coveted that book and remembered it.

20 years later I was telling a friend in another city about it. She managed to score a copy of it for my birthday, and gave it to me.

Less than a week later my college friend, whom I hadn’t spoken to in a decade or more, sent me the stolen copy in the mail. It was packaged carefully with a note saying he remembered how much I loved the book, saying he’d tried to give it back to the college library but they didn’t really want it as they’d moved to mostly digital systems and weren’t currently expanding their fiction collection.

So now I have two copies: they’re both my favorite.

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WendellSanders01 OP t1_j8mlyu2 wrote

It actually reminds me of one of my experiences in college that I totally forgot about. Same thing, one of my friends stole a book. But looking back on it, the book that he stole was extremely rare. There was a rare book shop near the campus, and for some reason he just walked in and swiped it off a shelf. But it was odd because I wasn't even a very close friend of his, he felt the need to give it to me, which was random. Eventually I ended up losing that book and then years later I remembered that experience and I tried looking for that book to buy a copy of it, that's when I realized how rare it was, I finally bought it but it was pricey, since then it's doubled in value which is nice though.

Hmm.. Lord Dunsany.. I'm not familiar with him.. Sounds interesting I'll have to read about him. Great story, thanks!

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