should be dismembered (while still alive) joint by joint beginning simultaneously from the fingertips and toes and working inward.
Other than that, I have no opinion on the matter.
Now I feel bad. I commend you for admitting you have a problem, though. In a feeble effort to help, might I suggest you print out this page and carry it with you at all times? You could even rip it into SEVERAL bookmarks! (Other helpful suggestions: a dollar bill, your train ticket/transfer, or other train station sort of litter. If it’s an OLD library book, it might still have the old-time punch card in a front pocket that you can use, haha.) Seriously, the occasional dogear is not so horrible, it’s just a book with a couple dozen of them LEFT FOLDED for many years, with additional arrows or lines drawn to the exact word where the person stopped reading that really grate on me.
This stuff really flies up my butt, too, but I have to say I enjoy seeing the little “asides” from an earlier era. It’s kind of like a quick jaunt down memory lane.
However, my mother has gotten into a hideous habit of late. She has always given me books on birthday and Christmas, and in the past this was always a welcome treat. But recently she’s begun writing things on alot of the pages. Little quips, or “Can you BELIEVE this?” or, “SilkyThreat, this sounds like something you’d say”. And these are brand new books! I have NO idea why she’s continued doing it, but it’s on my last nerve.
It first started when she gave me “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe” which is centered in Alabama. I could sort of see her point in doing it in that book; she knew who Fanny Flagg was writing about regarding certain characters, or was telling me the real name of a place that Fanny had mentioned. That was ok, or at least I saw why she did it.
But since then she’s done it to just about every single book she’s given me. And most of the stuff she’s inserting is just CRAP. I know my mother is not getting any younger, but she’s far from senile. I think mainly she is just bored and thinks it’s entertaining for me to read her little statements on the side, like she’s peering over my shoulder while I read the book! I don’t know. Of course, I won’t be able to get her to quit it, and if I mention it, she’ll only get worse about it, and try to come up with much wittier things to write in the margins.
Oh well. At least she’s still giving me the books. That’s a plus. I guess I can overlook the scrawlings. 
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by brachyrhynchos *
**
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!!
One of my proudest moments as a library employee was busting some twit ripping out an article she wanted from one of our bound journals. So instead of paying the $1.00 it would have taken to just photocopy the thing, she ended up paying to replace the entire issue (ended up being around $100 b/c we had to get reprints), getting placed on academic probation (basically, if she screws up again she gets kicked out of college) and had to write a 5 page paper on why she was such a thoughtless idiot.
I love using my special librarian powers for good and not evil… 
I hate book defacers too, but on the other hand it’s so much fun seeing them make public idiots of themselves!
Like the person who took out a copy of Northern Stars (an anthology of Canadian SF stories) and on the contents page marked each story with a check mark, DNF, or DNR. Most were DNF or DNR. I can only assume that DNF means Did Not Finish and DNR means Did Not Read. Since all the stories were great, the defacer must have been terminally stupid.
Or the girl who wrote commentary addressed to Douglas Coupland in purple ink on almost every page of Life After God. Did she think he was going to see it? Are comments written in novels directly transmitted to the author? Even if by magic they were, Coupland would only have laughed as hard as I did at her insane logic and refusal to understand irony.
I have been tempted to write in library books, although I would never actually do it. I just had a real problem with Sue Grafton’s first-person narrator knowing things she shouldn’t have known. I understand the wish to educate the next reader.
When I did this, I was yelled at by the library staff, who said that over time the sticky stuff on the Post-Its would become acidic and leave marks. I work in an archive, so I know this is a possible concern, but it isn’t going to happen in the three weeks I have the book :rolleyes:. So anyway, just remember to take 'em out when you return it.
When I tear a book by accident, I tape it. Some of the books I’ve gotten out are old and extremely fragile-one so old it was falling apart so bad that I had to tape the spine.
I don’t bother cutting pictures out-I take the books to school and scan the pictures. Ha!
And um, I’m another dog-earor.
[Eve on the Mountaintop]:
SHAME—shame on you dog-earrers and writer-inners! Of course, writing in a book you OWN is a whole other matter—though remember, this book will probably outlive you and will be someone else’s book someday.
I have never found any old maginalia of much interest—but I have found things tucked into old books that are fascinating. A postcard from Paris in the 1950s, from the book buyer to the recipient; drafts for a party invitation from 1895; and the best: a blue-tinted photo of a dapper young man in a straw hat, labeled “Uncle Hecker, June 1, 1900.”
I loathe people who deface library books. It is an appalling practice because YOUDONOTOWNTHE*BOOKS! They are public property and other people have to read them after you. whne you dogear, mark up, or otherwise deface a library book, you are no better than a common vandal, and the pump don’t work because you already took the handle!
Now, I have to agree that a certain amount of judicious writing in a book that you own shows that you love it. I don’t write in mine, although I do stamp my name on the flyleaf of every book I buy with the stone name chop I had made for me in China. It works with both softbound and hardbound books–something you can’t say of bookplates–and it looks really sharp.
Have you ever seen library books that have been “corrected” by others? This occurs when some past reader feels that the book’s author has made an error, and they must strike the offending item and write in their own correction. Sometimes, the correction is more their opinion than it is a fact.
I’ve seen most of the other notes and marks mentioned in this thread, as well as the missing pages and cut-out pictures, but these attempts at correction are what bother me the most. Really, if these self-appointed annotators are so upset by what an author has stated, why don’t they write their own book that incorporates their correction or interpretation of the item?
This “correcting” practice shows a lack of respect in every way possible–to the book, to its author, and to the library users. It especially shows a lack of respect to those who own the library and the books, whether the owner is the public or a university or college–the public’s tax dollars and/or the students’ tuition fees then have to pay for the repair or replacement of such books.
Should a special circle of hell be reserved for these annotators? Well, yes, in my opinion–but only until we can think of something more diabolical.
I can’t even bear to write in my textbooks, let alone my novels. Writing in a library book is a crime against humanity.
Writing in a publicly used book should be a crime! I am a dog-earer, though, but only in my own books.
Does this thread remind anyone of Stephen King’s story The Library Police?
Wabbit, you are my hero.
Thanks! I don’t get to ‘smite’ offending patrons that often so that particular episode remains one of my most cherished workplace memories.
I have been absolutely driven insane by this very thing recently. This is one of my greatest fucking irritants, up with frat boys breakeing glass bottles on bike lanes.
God Damn! Purple fucking flourescent highlighter pens! Agh! And people who write in the meanings of words they don’t know-- this is just embarassing to them, as these are always distressingly, um, nonverbal people who have left this stuff. And this is at college libraries! These aren’t little kids, but supposedly our beat and brightest! It drives me up the damn wall! Or when they’ve highlighted or underlined so much that it looks as if the parts they ignored must be the notable points. Oh God, and attempts at translation of foreign works between the lines of print! I picked up a book where someone had tried this, writing in words they didn’t know, i.e. most of them. Man, if you don’t know that many words, you AREN’T going to be able to understand this German work anyway, schmuck. They always give up after the first 20 pages, but it makes it very hard to read without your eyes automatically being drawn to their incorrect translation markings-- just like when someone has put in absolutely fucking inane marginal notes. In some very technical books I don’t mind corrections of spellings where there is a typo, though, especially in bibliographies, but not commentary, please!
At IU’s library all the books on nude photography, works on Marilyn Monroe, the Third Reich, serial killers, etc., were kept in “the cage” (you need to get permission to view them in a special room with a librarian present and only a pencil and paper) along with the rare books as they were the most in danger of the x-acto blade.
Aieeegh! Need to go recite my mantra now.
Oh, yeah, and don’t forget the P.C. Police, who can’t get over the fact that 100 years ago, writers used “improper” terms. I see book wherein “Negro,” “broad,” “Jewess,” etc., are either scribbled out or have notations like, “Horrible! How can so-and-so use such words!”
Umm, gee, part of the charm (and shock) of older books is entering into the year it was written . . .
OK, this small rant is a bit outdated, but I am reminded of it by these posts.
Idiots who stole cards out of card catalogs, You are still guilty and the fact that they are outmoded dosen’t get you off the hook. You have a black, black stain on your heart and no easy was yo rememdy it.
To this day, 10 years since I have used a card catalog, this pisses me off if I think about it. The utter selfishness of it boggles my mind: “I need to find this book and someone has stolen all the little pencils, so i will just take the card.” The only was you could do this is if it never occured to you that anyone else could ever want to look up that book (and let’s face it, people who do this sort of thing are not usually looking up esoteria)and it never occured to you that real, living people had to go thru the damn card catalog and retype up (by hand! on a typewriter!) every card you wandered off with.
I have no idea what these people do now that we have (thankfuly) gone to computer catalogs. Probably buy all there papers on the internet.