Books with stuff written in

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I usually buy second hand books, and I love it when a student has written all over the pages, so you get little annotations about teh text. Somtimes they're insightful, usually they don't say much, but they ALWAYS add character to the book - I adore reading words that other people have read before.

Anyone else share this, or is it just me being odd?

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Friday, 3 September 2004 07:19 (twenty years ago)

Sometimes, I like that. What's even better is when you buy a second hand book and there's some sort of letter in it. I bought one recently which had a poem written by a child on a slip of paper inside it. You get a sudden weird glimpse into someone else's world that they never expected or meant you to have.

― hobart paving (hobart paving), Friday, 3 September 2004 07:25 (twenty years ago)

Things found in used books

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Friday, 3 September 2004 07:30 (twenty years ago)

I'm sure Di hates this - see the 'pet hates' thread!

― PinXor (Pinkpanther), Friday, 3 September 2004 07:31 (twenty years ago)

i don't really like it as it reduces the amount of available room for me to scribble all over the book. i need a lot of room for scribbling.

― gem (trisk), Friday, 3 September 2004 07:39 (twenty years ago)

there are weird dedications written in books sometimes. On Bank Holiday Monday, I went to a car boot sale in Carterton and bought a copy of The Stonor Eagles by William Horwood. On the first page was written the following:

To Sexy Soft Inner Legs

Snot Love from Colin

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 3 September 2004 07:40 (twenty years ago)

I used to buy a lot of books second hand from the Rugby School bookshop, and they always had some child's retarded scrawl all over them. Sometimes it was amusing to see what notes they'd written, but sometimes it was very irritating if they'd underlined something and written "ironic considering what happens later" or "he dies in the end". The copy I bought from there of Captain Corelli's Mandolin was completely covered some GCSE student's unintelligible comments all the way through. In one bit they'd underlined Pelagia's name and written "FEMINIST?" and in another margin "Communism = Fascism, just as bad as each other".

I like MarkH's story.

― Cathy (Cathy), Friday, 3 September 2004 07:57 (twenty years ago)

Cathy's comments remind me of when I lent my copy of Julius Caesar to a kid in English called Graeame and it was much later that I found he's added his own very individual annotations including adding the word "bar" after "by the Capitol I met a lion" and adding "Clay, the famous boxer who changed his name to Mohammed Ali" after "Cassius".

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 3 September 2004 08:07 (twenty years ago)

The books I have seen the greatest amount, though not necessarily the most varied, "stuff written in" were certainly teh various tomes of Lenin's Complete Works in the uni library. Many a generation of students had left their (anonymous) little remarks on those pages over the decades...

― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Friday, 3 September 2004 08:43 (twenty years ago)

I adore old, scribbled in books that have really soft, flimsy paper that comes from being thumbed through a lot.

― the impossible shortest special path! (the impossible shortest specia), Friday, 3 September 2004 08:48 (twenty years ago)

Hey, that's inspired! In some ways it could work.
Wait, were Cassius Clay and Muhammed Ali really the same person or is this lies?

― dog latin (dog latin), Friday, 3 September 2004 08:51 (twenty years ago)

um yes dl they're the same guy

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Friday, 3 September 2004 08:53 (twenty years ago)

My favourite annotations are in the copy of Inferno I inhertied from my ex, Leela. She'd studied it at school, but obviously at a time when she was burning the candle at both ends - there are several handwritten sentences that trail off in a downwards tail at the end where she'd fallen asleep while writing them!

― Markelby (Mark C), Friday, 3 September 2004 09:06 (twenty years ago)

the line possibly continued across the desk and then (wavily) across her knee.

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 3 September 2004 09:09 (twenty years ago)

the drawing of the midnight line!

― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Friday, 3 September 2004 09:11 (twenty years ago)

― Archel (Archel), Friday, 3 September 2004 11:01 (twenty years ago)

Am I the only one that thinks writing inside books is just plain awful? I suppose people that highlight text (ie. students) are worse, but ACK! I can't read through anything with other people's writing in it.

― Augustine (Augustine Bearse), Saturday, 4 September 2004 19:54 (twenty years ago)

Snot Love from Colin

-- MarkH

Er Mark, that wouldn't be a hardback copy of Sense and Sensibility would it?

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Saturday, 4 September 2004 22:38 (twenty years ago)

Maryann to thread.

― rainy (rainy), Saturday, 4 September 2004 23:58 (twenty years ago)

the 'japs' story is duane's though. Duane, write about it.

― maryann (maryann), Tuesday, 14 September 2004 05:13 (twenty years ago)

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