I once took a novel out of the library (won’t tell you which one!) in which, in the first few pages, someone had drawn a star and written a comment:
“Foreshadowing death by fire at the end”
Thanks a lot, bucko.
In high school, I would buy a used copy of the assigned novel whenever possible, so I could make notes and highlight with impunity. Once, a teacher saw me underlining and thought she had me busted, until I showed her the first page, where the ID number wasn’t. More recently, someone saw me marking an “ex-library” book I’d bought from Amazon Marketplace: same reaction, until I showed him the “Bernalillo County Library” stamp.
Infectious Lass: What was on the JBJ page that you wanted to see?
Flowerchild: I feel your pain. I stopped lending books after the third instance of getting one back that was swollen from having had something spilled on it, or having been left in the rain.
cowgirl: That’s horrible!
Doesn’t it ever occur to these people that other people will see their notations and be unimpressed? When I was a kid, I got a copy of The Silver Chair from the town library. Someone had taken up two of the blank pages in the front to write some rambling, incoherent “story”. Just in case there was any confusion, they added, “This was written on a stoned day in 1978.” Indeed. But the capper would be when I bought a used paperback that had been marked up by someone I knew! Her full name was on the inside front cover, and the inside back cover was a list of ways in which her SO had been disrespecting her. Really, I thought. You were right to ditch him, but next time, check your books before you sell them! She would have croaked if she’d known I read all that, and she’s lucky that the book fell into my hands, and not those of someone with less discretion.
Yeah, you shouldn’t mark public material up like that, but treating a book like a museum piece is nonsense to me. Books are meant to be read, and they’re going to experience wear and tear, no matter how hard you try to preserve them. A well-worn book is a well-read book, and I would consider it a greater compliment to the author than a book that looks like it’s been kept behind a roped-off glass display case.
I almost never throw away books. I cherish them. I keep them. I love them. Here in Hungary, English-language books are a bit of a commodity amongst us expats, and once one of your books starts going around, it’s likely to hit seven people before you get it back… and I think that’s a compliment.
It’s true, though…hardcovers I like to keep in one piece, if possible. But paperbacks are meant to be crinkled, dog-eared, written in. And these notes have sentimental value, too. Every time I find a marginal note in a half-forgotten paperback, I enjoy a bit of a nostalgic moment as I think back to where I was, and what I was thinking when I jotted down those words.
When I was a kid, I bought a paperback at a used bookstore (from the Dragons of Pern series if anyone cares). A previous owner apparently was confused by complex past tenses and “corrected” the novel.
I can’t think of an example from the book, but I can make one up:
Ex/ “He had told her that his brother had had the chicken pox as a child.”
The “had had” may look weird, but in that tense it was correct. So for several chapter that were written in the past tense and in which the chracters were reminiscing about something that was futher in the past still, someone had emphatically crossed out the second “had”.
I like what Trefusis in Stephen Fry’s The Liar had to say about books. The gist of it was that it is the words that are important, not the item. He wondered how many children had been put off reading for life by an overzealous parent telling them off for not being careful enough with a book. “Words may be my church,” he says, “but I am a poor worshipper”, or words to that effect anyway (what; you expect me to remember a random quote from a book I last read about 5 years ago?)
Not that this has anything to do with library books. If you’re reading one of them then have some fucking decorum.
pan
Aside from taking notes in class books, which I can’t bring myself to do because they’re so expensive, the only way to acceptably damage a book IMO is by reading it to pieces. I tend to reread my books and over time many of them get pretty worn, but I never write in them, and I only dogear the pages if I have no other option. I find that folded up bookstore receipts make good bookmarks, so I have no shortage of THOSE. I have a few wrecked books from my childhood that I’ve had to buy new copies of because I read the old ones to death. sniff If you’re TOO careful with your books, why buy them in the first place? They’re to be read, not put on a shelf as part of a perpetually unread “Great Classics of Literature” set to impress your friends, even if you happen to LIKE the books in question!
Library books are sacred objects and if I ever cause any damage to them – purely by accident! – I will promptly admit it and pay up.
Personally I rarely mark in my own books – other than textbooks, of course. One exception is Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg, which I marked up write a bit. Ms. Flagg, while quite a good writer, IMO, cannot add or subtract at all. The book is set up in chapters with dates and, very often, the dates are wrong. For instance, one character is established early in the book as being born around 1915ish and, later in the book, is described as a very old man in a chapter dated 1970ish – this discrepancy drove me crazy, so I marked out the 1970ish date and changed it to a 1990ish one. There are a few other examples, but I can’t be more exact as my (marked-in) copy is missing from its shelf – it is probably upstairs in my son’s room but I don’t feel like searching it out. I’ve also marked in a few series books that I lent to friends, so they’d know the order to read the books in. Of course, these are my own personal copies. And I enjoy buying a used book that has been marked in – it makes me feel a connection with the books former owner.
That said, marking in a library book is completely different. Damaging a library book is repulsive. Library books belong to everyone and should be treated with scrupulous respect.
Jess
I mark up my textbooks, but only because I plan on keeping them. Sure I could sell them back for like 1/10 what I paid for them, but I figure I’ll keep them for future reference or reading enjoyment.
I agree that marking up a Library book is a capital crime, although I have done this in a couple cases. The only time I do this is when the author (or some loser) writes something so insanly stupid or wrong in it. I always provide a cite or two and I always sign it with my handle, in pencil, and as short and neat as possible.
So if you ever see something in the margin like:
WRONG!
<cite>
-BioHazard
You know it was me…
Ducks
As for my own books, I always mark them up (unless I’m keeping them as collectors Items). In fact, I “inherited” my dads books, some of which he got from his dad and it was a very wonderfull experience reading their margin notes, and adding my own thoughts. My brother has even read a couple of the books and he’s added his thoughts as well. When/if I ever have kids I intend to encourage them to do this in their own books as well.
BioHazard
one of our Olivia Goldsmith books came back with all the swear words blacked out. Which of course was about 1/4 of the book. The man who did it said he “was trying to sheild other people from that bad language”, and we should thank him.
We thanked him with a bill for the book, processing charges and the loss of Library privledges for 1 year
:Gives BioHazard a stern look:
We had a 1st grader come in next to tears because he accidently tore his brothers Library book. He insisted on paying for it. We charged him a dime and gave him a sucker.
I once took out Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism from the local library, and it had a running commentary–in ink!–on the text throughout, and I found it enlightening and entertaining. It’s been 25 years, and I ought to see if they still have that book; I’m sure it hasn’t been read a whole lot, sadly.
Well, though I’m not much of a book marker (it’s just not my style), I believe that books you own should be avidly consumed.
Shove them in your pocket, read them in the rain, break the spine so they lay flat, get crumbs between the pages, whatever it takes. There’s nothing better than a well-read book, with the cover twice taped on and the corners of pages crinkled.
Though I rarely dispose of books, I have a liberal lending policy. Unless it’s one of the few books I really want to get back, please borrow it for as long as you like, and lend it to another person or two who would enjoy it.
Oddly enough, I’ve had quite a few opportunites to use my old textbooks that I’ve saved from college and law school, though it’s been 10 and 15 years or so since I was in the classes.
I must admit that once or twice I’ve returned a library book with a spagetti sauce or Chinese food stain, but I’ve never marked them up.
I borrowed Amanda Foreman’s Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire from the library last week and some maroon had done a family tree in the last few pages. Idiot. Presumably she was doing it for her own benefit so why not use a piece of paper?
I have to admit that at times when I come across a mistake, I’m itching to correct it. I don’t wanna correct my own books because, after all, I know it’s wrong. Library books taunt me.
Oh boy, I can do this one better. I am a medical librarian. The former librarian had bound most of the journals and the bindery bound them so tightly and with no margins so it’s impossible to make a decent copy of any articles. So, what do I do when someone needs a copy? I cut the damn article out, copy it, and stick the article back. HA! They are my journals and I’ll do what I want with them. If someone else did this though, I would kill them. One of my liberry school profs said “there’s nothing sacred about books. Write in them if you want, as long as they are yours.” I write in mine, spill food on them, dog ear the pages. But would I do this to a book I got from the public library? Hell, no. Not because books are precious, but because it’s not my property.
Originally posted by Wabbit:
I would love to see a TV show based on this. There have been plenty of crime dramas, but unfortunately none in which perpetrators of crimes against library books are tracked down, caught, and punished severely. That would be so cool.
There’s only one acceptable solution to people who commit marginalia to library books: they should be strung up naked and attacked by book caretakers armed with tattoo needles.
Background: A huge man with a sword chasing some teenager past a bookcase:
"Coming this fall from FOX - Conan the Librarian!
{Geek reference}
Really piss them off - write “I found this really elegant proof, but don’t have room in this margin”
{/Geek reference}
Keeps them guessing for centuries!
I noticed that people had marked various text books from the University Library, which I found more amusing than irritating.
I found it even more amusing to double underline completely random (and generally irrelevant or unimportant) words and phrases with exclamation marks in the margin, and comments like “yes! SO true!” or “Exactly!!”
Here’s an interesting side note. I lived in a small town in the bible belt for a while when I was was young. I checked out some photography books and discovered that every single nude (or even close to nude) picture were very neatly sliced out. Sliced out so neatly that only the square where the picture was out, even the caption was still there. When I went back to the library I searched many other books, medical books, art books, magazines. They all had any nudity cut out of them! Even the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition was “edited”. At first I thought it was done by some kid that couldn’t get his hands on any porno. I took one of the books up to the head library to tell her it was damaged and I found out that she was the one that did it because they were “obscene”, and she also said that she edits all books that come in. That really blew me away. Unless there was some really weird law in that small town, wasn’t she breaking the Book Laws?
Garr–I hate librarians like that! They’re an insult to the profession. I’d much rather be a Conan-type librarian, crushing the skulls of fools with overdue books and the like. That would be Valhalla for me! 