Welcome to Booklend, a lending library that sends books out by the mail. Booklend is the creation of a man with a postage meter, a roomful of books, and an urge to share. Borrowing a book is free, and you're welcome to keep the book until you're done. Read it at your leisure -- nobody likes to be rushed while they're reading. When you're done, pop it back in the mail. We'll even pay return postage. For more information on who we are and why we do this crazy thing, please read our about page (or browse the FAQ). For more information on how the process works, please read our procedure page. Otherwise, log in and start borrowing.

What's New:

• January 17, 2007
  Booklend has been on hiatus for a couple of years. Books can still be returned to the PO Box listed on the About Booklend page. If you donated books in the past and are miffed that they never made it onto the site, email me for retribution.

  And speaking of email... I botched something and received no mail for a while there. If you sent something and I never responded, I apologize.

  As of now, I have no plans to resurrect the Lending Library. I thank you for the participation in what was a fun experiment.

• December 14, 2004
  
  I had tried to avoid doing this because I thought it would be discouraging, but I did it anyway. I ran some Booklend statistics to see how Booklend return rates looked -- something I'd never done before. Anyway, here are a couple of things I thought were interesting:

  Date first book sent: January 23, 2001
  Total books sent: 823

  Books sent to the most places, #:
  The Professor and the Madman, 7
  Portnoy's Complaint, 6
  Rabbit, Run, 6
  17 books tied with 5, among them books by Pynchon, DeLillo, and Bellow, which leads me to wonder if my collection of books is way too middle-aged urban male, or if people just want to read those books (Portnoy's Complaint and Rabbit, Run being very, um, racy).

  Most books read by one reader: 4 (>10 people)
  This surprised me. I thought that there would be a couple of people who had checked out many more.

  Greatest times between checkout and return, # days:
  An American Tragedy, 2 yrs., 323 days
  A Pitcher's Story, 2 yrs., 270 days
  Alexander of Macedon, 2 yrs., 222 days
  Paris to the Moon, 2 yrs., 70 days
  For Common Things, 2 yrs., 58 days
  
  There are a couple of books that have been out there for more than three years, which would make me suspect that they're never going to return. Then again, I just got back the first two books on the list and they'd both been out almost that long. These numbers help better explain why I got rid of the waitlist. Three years is a long time to wait for/remember a request.

  I hope this has been interesting to someone. If you\'ve had a book for a long time, drop me a line to let me know if I should eliminate the book or if I\'ll see it again.

• December 8, 2004
  There was a problem with the host for booklend.net, causing some information in the database to be lost. Unfortunately, there was also a problem with the backup, so it is irretrievable.

  What this means is that if you checked out a book (or created an account) between November 2nd and December 5th of this year, you need to re-check out the book or re-enter your account info. I know who this affected because I get an email when books are checked out, but I do not have email addresses for the people.

  I sincerely apologize for this. I feel really bad about it, but I have no control over it.

• March 17, 2004
  This is going to go into the category of Neither Here nor There, but I'm going to bore you anyway. So, I was just watching TV while packing up books to be sent. Packing, labeling, stamping, sealing, and moving books is pretty boring, really*. It's repetitive and there isn't positive feedback or anything. I'm explaining this because I need to make excuses for watching TV. Ahem.

  OK, so I was watching TV, and all I could find that I was interested in watching was an NIT tournament game. For those not in the postseason college basketball loop, the NIT is the tournament that the best teams who couldn't get into the NCAA tournament play in. So, these are all winning teams (having a winning record is a requirement to get in), but the tournament lacks some (read: all) of the allure of the NCAA tournament. I figured out a way to make it more interesting, though, and I'm so proud of myself for coming up with it, that I wanted to share.

  Here's what you do:
  -Turn on an NIT game.
  -Get a pad of paper.
  -Everytime you hear the phrase "next year" (it's usually something like, "Western Iowa A&T is going to be really good *next year*," or, "Some Guy might not be able to hit the side of a barn with his free throw attempts this year, but watch out *next year*...") give yourself two points.
  -At the end of the game, total up your score.
  -If your score is more than the losing team score, write a letter to Texas Tech telling them how embarrassing it is for such a fine institution to have such a terrible human being for a coach.
  -If your score is more than the winning team score, write a letter to ESPN asking them to air a replay of the 2001 World Series of Poker final instead of NIT tournament games.

  Hate email can be directed to markATbooklendDOTnet.

  *The most difficult part of Booklend mailings: Finding the books. They have some special chameleon-like ability to blend into the bookshelves.

• March 2, 2004
  There are new books on the site, compliments of Molly Terrell and Catherine Mosley. Check them out! (That was some library humor there -- I apologize.)