Booking Through Thursday: Own or Borrow?

Booking Through Thursday hosts a weekly meme with a bookish question each Thursday.

This week's question is: "All things being equal (money, space, etc), would you rather own copies of the books you read? Or borrow them?"

Both! I do not need a copy of every book I read and probably would not return to most of them if I did own a copy. Yet I am one of those people who re-reads beloved books dozens of times.

I recently confessed to my husband that if anything happened to my copies of The Lord of the Rings trilogy (and The Hobbit) and The Chronicles of Narnia, I would feel lost and partly empty until I replaced them.

Since this blog is about children and learning activities, I'll address the question from the standpoint of children's books. For the most part, I would prefer to own many children's books. That way, the children can see them in the bookcase and pull out whatever book they would like to explore. On the other hand, we have access to thousands of books and dozens of magazines at the public library. I would never buy all of those books or magazines, no matter how much money I had. Taking advantage of our public library means a nearly infinite stash of reading materials to choose from!