Flavorwire

“I was 19. He was 30. I’m not sure he thought this gift through,” writes a recipient of Lolita. “By the end, I was so in love with him and so desperate to have any excuse to talk to him that I slipped a photo of myself and my mom in between the pages when I gave the book back,” recalls a woman whose future husband gave lent her a copy of Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. These are the tales that make up the tremendously engrossing Tumblr The Books They Gave Me. Its tagline is, “In which we reflect on books given to us by lovers,” and the entries meditate on the way the reading material we exchange with current paramours and ex-flames affects and shapes the relationship. Follow the blog to read others’ stories of literary romance and heartbreak, and anonymously contribute your own if you’re so moved.