. . . Among the lowest form of literary life (aside from agents, of course). What the hell IS it with these idiots?! There were two books I wanted to take out of the library today at lunchtime, but both of them had passages underlined and notes scribbled in the margins.
The ONLY time this is excusable is when it’s a book I have written, and the scribbled notes say things like, “this is the best book in the history of the printing press!”
Yeah, Eve! I agree 100%. I recently borrowed a book from the library, and on a random page, someone had written in the margin “Hi to whoever has this book! Melanie, 1997!” Or something like that. In big, square, junior high girl writing. Pissed me off sooo bad, that someone would write on public property like that. And I’m certain that the girl who did it didn’t actually check it out, she randomly picked it up and scrawled in it (based on her level of intellect, no way would she have wanted to read that book). Stupid bitch.
Gah! I absolutely hate that! I don’t even write in my textbooks or game books. Bunny Girl’s right. It’s a lack of respect for other people’s property and a lack of respect for books.
And there’s not even any excuse for it, now that Post-it Notes have been invented! If you have to use the book for research, either photocopy the damn pages you need and write on THEM, or stick Post-its in the book and write on THEM.
Ike—you just reminded me, when I reviewed the grisly photo-packed book “The Killing of the President” about ten years ago, I referred to it as “A Child’s Big Book of Kennedy Assassination Photos.” It was either that or “Where’s Oswaldo?”
And stop tearing the damn pages out. I know they’re pretty pictures, but honestly! This makes me want to get medieval, so mad…grrrr…can’t speak, where’s the librarian?..aarrgghhh!!
While we’re at it, what’s with all the food crammed in the pages? I’m not just talking about a few stray cookie crumbs, I’m talking an entire Hostess HoHo sandwiched between pages, giant globs of gum, etc. Is that your idea of a bookmark? And while we’re on bookmarks, you know you can use pretty much ANY piece of paper, right? I mean, what’s with the dogearing the pages, and underlining where you left off, like it would be such a chore to accidently read the same line TWICE. Wouldn’t want any unnecessary reading, now, would we?
And, as long as we’re at it, could we reserve a special little corner of Hell for the sanctimonious twits who go through library books and black out all the ‘swear’ words?
What about the people who manage to leave a pubic hair in the book? Anyone else ever found one? NOT what you want to find when you’re reading on the train while eating your sandwiches and there’s nowhere to wash your hands.
I find it intriguing if the little notes or “? loves ?” is from the 1930s or 40s or 50s. Generally, grafitti from those eras is more literate, and I do ponder whatever became of ? and ?.
This does not excuse it, but I must admit sometimes it is intriguing. I’ve yet to find one that says “Glenn Miller rules,” though.
How about the geniuses who’d write stuff like “turn to page 93!” “Now turn to page 10!” “Now turn to page 33!” “I can’t believe you were dum enuff to turn all those pages hahaha!”
Whatever happened to these morons, anyway?
Oh, yeah. They grew up and started writing Try this! It’s fun!!!11 Fwds:.
For creepy, try people who use a razor to cut out photos in a medical book/journal leaving only captions like “The prepubesent vagina.”
Arden Ranger said:
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Actually, when they are you own books I think that writing in them is the highest sign of respect–no one can look at my battered, dog-eared. annotated in threee different colors copy of Paradise Lost and not know that I loved that book. To me,writing in a book makes it yours. So you shouldn’t do it when you don’t actually own the book.
I own a lot of books that have things scribbled in the margins. Some of the graffiti goes back to the 1920’s, and a lot of the books have gift dedications written on the front. My father gets them from trash piles and garage sales and god knows where else… and when time comes to get rid of them, he usually donates them to the library. A lot of library books come that way, and I suspect that many of them were just previously owned. After all, a book with stuff written on it that goes back 50 years probably hasn’t been in the library all that time, you dig?
I read a lot of books from the library and find many signs of earlier civilizations, some of whom were actually more literate than one might expect.
There is the Charles Addams books of drawings, for example, in which someone has taken a blue pen and carefully outlined all the characters on three or four consecutive pages. We can hope the person in qustion was accepted to te Rhode Island School of Design after all; the practice couldn’t have hurt.
Then there was the psychology book with scrawled comments in the margins: No; No; Not true (underlined 3x); Current research shows that…
And then there are the ones I actually find rather sweet–the people who take the trouble to correct the author’s grammar. It’s so nice to be reading along and to see an alternative and less objectionble word penciled in alongside the author’s misguided attempt: infintives unsplit, prepositions removed from ends of sentences, and so on.
If the libraries where you are are anything like the libraries around here then the library turns right around and sells those books at the “Friends of the Library Book Sale”, then uses the money to buy nice new, library-bound copies of the books it actually wants.
Oh, and I’m a bleeding-heart liberal and not generally a supporter of capital punishment, but people who damage or destroy library books should be summarily executed, and their bodies hung up outside the library as a warning to others. For just writing in a book–especially in pencil–I suppose a simple flogging followed by a few years at hard labor might be sufficient. People who do things like cut out pictures from rare books at the Library of Congress, however, must be made an example of.
Well, we suspect the library just throws most of them out like Dad couldn’t bring himself to do in the first place. Compulsive hoarding is a bitch. But some of them probably make it through, and I think that sort of thing is what you’re seeing.
I am a dog-earer. Not as bad as I was when I was a child, but I still catch myself doing it. Mostly on the train when I don’t have a bookmark close to hand.
I try to make them small though-just the very corner. Yes, as a child I was one to turn down the whole upper half of the page. I got over that. Maybe someday I’ll break the habit entirely.