Friend was annoyed I bought her son a book from the charity shop ..was I wrong ?

[luluxxx]

My friends little boy loves reading,he loves books.
It was his birthday last week and I spotted an old Pinocchio book in the charity shop ,it was from 1957 and inside In pencil was a note “to Jim happy 6th birthday love Eleanor”
I don’t know but it tugged at my heart strings a bit.
In my head I thought that book was full of love and rather than sitting in Charity shop or even worse landfill that it would be nice to go to another home to me loved.
I also bought him so new books from Waterstones too.
My friend text basically saying she threw it away as it was dirty ,and her words “no offense but I don’t think you should give a book from a charity shop that’s been good knows where “ as a gift.
Anyway I’m assuming she’s thrown it away
I was a bit sad because I was only trying to do something nice.
It deffo wasn’t dirty either,it was the old pages and they had little yellow areas (not dirt just a old book)

Did I do wrong ?
I have anxiety to start with ,now I’m kicking myself for being too sentimental and probably made a fool of myself

It's very rude of her to complain about it, if she didn't want it she should just have quietly got rid of it. However I do know lots of people who really would not want this in their house and would think it was a very strange thing to gift for a child's birthday present. Not because of specific anxieties around germs, more of a general attitude. If PP don't know people like that then they must live in a bit of a bubble.

I buy loads of stuff secondhand for my own household but would be really wary of gifting secondhand things (esp if they look old/used rather than as new condition) to other people unless I already know they are likely to appreciate them. I didn't dare tell most other local mums that I used cloth nappies sometimes. I know many of them would have thought it was really unhygienic and just wouldn't have understood why anyone would want to do that.

So I think you did a lovely thing and I would have loved it but it's not an uncommon attitude not to value something like that. It's a similar difference in attitude to people placing different values on homemade crafty type stuff, some people would really appreciate the personal thought and effort, other people would always choose something new/shop bought over something homemade.

You shouldn't feel awkward at all though, decide whether this is an actual friend where you can agree to disagree, or more of an acquaintance in which case it doesn't matter what she thinks.

You sound lovely and thoughtful. My DS loved the Rupert books, we'd collected as kids, so he'd have been delighted.

She could have just quietly donated the book, rather than making such a fuss.

She sounds very ignorant and materialistic. We have literally hundreds of books and most are from charity shops. A book from 1957 is a treasure!

Nothing wrong at all! What sort of friend is she? If she meant you were being cheap, you spent more on new too-plus I'd rather have a meaningful cheap gift from a friend, and always got second hand books as a kid. Most very well off people buy second hand-posher shops tend to have a table offering pre-owned books for a quid.
And she does realise that books sold in Waterstones etc might well have been picked up/coughed on far more recently than one from 1957?

My friend and I buy each other books from charity shops for Christmas (plus other stuff) we bought some good holiday reads for about £1! Books in airports are a fortune. I don't think you did wrong at all.
I buy gifts off vinted for people all the time obvs from the brand new with tags section.
Had some bargain named stuff!!

Your friend is a fuckwit. I wouldn't want to be friends with someone like that. Not only does she have no taste, she's rude and ungrateful.

OP, your friend has no soul.

Like a PP said, some people are funny about second-hand stuff. My friend hates second-hand jewellery (talking about real jewellery, not costume) even though you can, of course, wash it. And even if it's in excellent condition. And even though it represents amazing value. I'm not talking about beat-up old jewellery, I'm talking about nice stuff. (There are antique jewellery shops where we live, and she always turns her nose up at them, just because the stuff is second-hand.)

I don't think it's worth falling out over. Just say "OK, noted," and move on. And chalk it up to your friend being a weirdo!

Your friend is a prick.

I don’t think you did anything wrong. I buy a lot of second hand books for me
and my children, I personally wouldn’t buy them as a gift for someone else unless I was sure it would be well received, especially an old one in not great condition. She was unnecessarily rude though.

Tell her!
Hi friend, no offence to you either but that was pretty rude… But to avoid any awkwardness between us I’m happy to accept an apology 😊

I wish you were my friend op! I’d have been completely charmed by that.

Well, I might not like it if I didn't know it's provenance. And even if I did, he wasn't a nice man, and I'm not particularly a fan of his art even if it is high quality.

I wouldn't be rude about it, but taste is subjective, and one secondhand book chosen for sentimental reasons by the OP amongst a lot of new books would stick out like a sore thumb to me.

I gladly received a whole bundle of secondhand books for my son, but I wouldn't give a young child one amongst some new ones.

Your friend and you sound like very different people, hence why she didn't appreciate the gift. She sounds like an airhead.

Rude uptight cow, I'd demand it back and tell her her OH has been god knows where aswell.

What a horrible ungrateful witch.

Still only reasonable if her 6 year old has a habit of licking books!

And she was incredibly rude about it. No need for that even if she wasn't happy for the child to have it for bonkers reasons

I would have loved my children to receive such a beautiful gift, old books are to be treasured

Perhaps she had just watched that episode of Death In Paradise where the Agony Aunt is poisoned by touching a newspaper which has snail cone poison on one of the pages. I watched it last night on BBC Iplayer. 😄

I love books and would never throw one away, I'd always pass it on instead. I've used libraries my whole life and bought possibly hundreds of second-hand books for myself over the years.

I still wouldn't give a second-hand book to someone outside my family though. The one time I did the person wasn't at all rude, but with hindsight I suspect they didn't really appreciate it.

People roll their eyes at the provenance and storage issue, but haven't they ever browsed second-hand book stalls at fetes and the like and seen that some have clearly been chewed by mice? Anyone who spends a lot of time looking at second-hand books will have seen this. Boxes of books can have been stored in garages for years before making their way to a charity shop.

Accepting the risk of a few mouse germs is fine if you're buying a book for yourself, but I think it makes second-hand books fairly unsuitable for presents for other people's children if they're not actually collectors of those types of books. It's got nothing at all to do with loving books or not.

Libraries are different, if someone goes to a library they're making the choice themselves to get books off the shelves and probably the worst thing a child is likely to encounter there is other children's bogies like they'd find on books at school.

Like someone else said, probably OP should have kept the book in her home to share with visiting children and enjoyed it herself, or even brought it out with her to show her friend's child while calling it her own book, not a gift.

She'd no longer be my friend. What a philistine she is. A book that will be 70 years old next year should be treasured. You should tell her that it's worth a fortune (after her bins have been emptied).

She sounds as shallow as a puddle......her dumbfuckery would give me the friend ick tbh.

Is her house furnished entirely in grey? That would have given you a hint. I once had a friend that described our house as "second hand"!

I’m not sure why she felt it necessary to say anything. She could’ve just passed it on.

I’d think it was a nice gift, but I have a sibling who’d not even touch it. She has an ‘ick’ about second hand books. She wouldn’t even borrow one from a library. 🙄

I'd genuinely never ever considered that a second hand book is the same as giving someone a grotty tatty second hand object of any other kind.

Books are.. well, books. A decent condition second hand book is not remotely comparable to a grubby used toy!

Aren't humans strange. I've got tons of second hand books, I grew up with access to thousands (our house looked like a library) of used and very old 100th hand books, and not once did I catch anything nasty from any of them! Nor did we have rampant book eating pests!

Why would a six year old need to lick a book to transfer germs from it?

I feel like this idea is a clue to why so many colds spread so easily, if people don't understand how germs can be transferred from hand to mouth (and the other way) all the time.

I do totally agree that the friend was rude though.