fiction files redux discussion
What We Do To Books
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i loved the old marginalia thread.
at work at the library, above our checkout desk, is a small cubby stuffed & overflowing with things we found left in books. old bookmarks, notes, recipes, postcards, playing cards, doodles, stickers, etc.,. i hope to create a bit display with it all at some point.
Slowrabbit wrote: "at work at the library, above our checkout desk, is a small cubby stuffed & overflowing with things we found left in books. old bookmarks, notes, recipes, postcards, playing cards, doodles, stickers, etc.,. i hope to create a bit display with it all at some point. ..."This sounds wonderful. You need to post photos here.
The creepiest item I ever found in a library book was in a biography of Goethe: a recruitment card with a website address for some type of Aryan Brotherhood hate group.
When I was in middle school, sometimes I'd do research projects at a downtown library. One day I found a clutter of books on a table; they were all about narcotics and celebrities who had died from drug abuse. I was skimming through one book and came to a page where somebody had written the words ON THE CONTRARY in pencil; it was in reference to a passage about the death of Judy Garland, and for the next 20 pages, all along the margins, this person had written a rambling biography/meditation about Garland. I suspected that if I had arrived an hour earlier I might have seen a drug-crazed Judy Garland impersonator furiously scribbling in the book.
A British author (Alan Bennett?) once described buying a used book; all of the pages were clean & unmarked, except one part where somebody had drawn a thin black line along the margin of the entire page. He kept rereading the page because he couldn't find anything exceptional about it; he was baffled because he couldn't understand why anyone would choose to mark it. Then a breeze came from an open window, the black line moved, and he was looking at a strand of hair caught in the book.
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The first of my finds was a due date slip from 1989 which was a pretty long time ago (I was 8!). This isn't the oldest due date slip I've come across, it's merely the one I didn't lose.
The second item I found was a small religious flyer warning about the possibility of going to hell and whether it was worth risking it. This flyer was two sided as you can see in the image below. I've heard the rumors that there was once a staff member here a long time ago that used to place these sorts of flyers into books as the were either cataloged or checked-in (I can't remember which). I am not even sure how something like that was ever allowed to happen here in the library as it seems rather improper.
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Adrian, that Alan Bennett story is hilarious. thank you.
Dan wrote: "The second item I found was a small religious flyer warning about the possibility of going to hell and whether it was worth risking it. This flyer was two sided as you can see in the image below. I've heard the rumors that there was once a staff member here a long time ago that used to place these sorts of flyers into books as the were either cataloged or checked-in (I can't remember which). I am not even sure how something like that was ever allowed to happen here in the library as it seems rather improper..."That staff member must get around a lot or be part of an obnoxious secret society, because I've seen these so-called "Christian" tracts in different libraries.
During the last year someone has been leaving them on a table at my post office, and they're having competition from Scientologists. I don't discriminate; I rip & toss 'em all into the same recycling bin.
I would like to see the books that Nabokov annotated when he was preparing his class lectures. Using the text of Kafka's Metamorphosis, he demonstated that Gregor Samsa was transformed into a beetle, rather than a cockroach.Nabokov's sketch of the beetle
Some reviewers & readers were indignant when a biographer mentioned the cranky notes that Katherine Anne Porter scribbled in novels. She was a Catholic and didn't approve of the Catholicism that appeared in certain novelists. I think Graham Greene was a special offender, in her eyes. She also left some ugly anti-Semitic remarks in books by Jewish authors.
Slowrabbit wrote: "as a reader, i prefer an unmarked book, but the artist in me still likes to see the wear and the notes and what not. i loved the old marginalia thread.
at work at the library, above our checkout desk, is a small cubby stuffed & overflowing with things we found left in books. old bookmarks, notes, recipes, postcards, playing cards, doodles, stickers, etc.,. i hope to create a bit display with it all at some point."
I found a great site while looking for (a place that catelogs ephemera) .
This place has some pretty cool finds!
"These days, unless I find myself in very unusual circumstances, I’m reluctant to read a book that shows any sign of prior occupancy. Mainly but not exclusively cosmetic, this aversion has proceeded in tandem with an increasing unwillingness to take other people’s readings — their opinions of what they have read — at face value."
What We Do To Books