You have time to read! Fix coffee or tea and open your latest library book. Or maybe it’s a used book sent up to you from Chamblin’s Bookmine in Jacksonville, a favorite place of Sam’s and mine to get lost in - literally.
Relax in a chair, turn a page - and then your attention is broken by somebody’s pencil marks on the paper.
They’re not pen marks (thank the book goddess), so you have a choice. Should you respect this trace of a previous reader? Or will you go get a pencil of your own and erase it?
But why were these marks made? Did someone want to give their opinion a bit of immortality? Or maybe they were short of index cards for a book report. Could it be a comment to me, a future reader?
Here’s another penciled passage, below. I’m challenged by the paragraph, but the reader before me understood it well enough to highlight the heart of it.
I wonder what you would think, or do, about this.
When I was young and high-minded I would completely erase anything that violated the author’s pure opinion. In fact, I was once paid to do this as a librarian.
But today! Today I don’t mind the company of an earlier reader. In fact, I’m curious why she felt so strongly about that particular point.
And after all, doesn’t every author create her own Secret Society of Readers? Now I belong to a few.
I feel like I'm participating in an informal book club when I see (unobtrusive) underlining.
Every reader has his/her own opinion. thoughts, interpretations and meaning of words. A book is ones personal property friend where they feel free to express their views with pencil. Seems a pencil is most always the choice of editing. I guess it is intended so they might change their minds. I always enjoy reading others "pleasure scratching" as I call it, so I may sometime get a different prospective of the authors meaning. It seems so personal to read others pencil marks, sort of like looking into their soul. I always look in anticipation for these marks in previously owned books. When I purchase these books I feel I am getting a little of someone's life. Oh if books could talk; not in the new way!