On bookmarks, dogears, and underlined passages
Years ago, I approached a local bookseller as he sat behind his counter, vigorously scrubbing the cover of a well-trampled book with some sauce that took the grit off—voila!—like magic.
“What is it?” I asked, probably bouncing a baby in a carrier and possibly holding a toddler by one hand.
He twitched his eyebrows at me and rumbled, “Lighter fluid.”
“Oh,” I said. I couldn’t imagine cleaning the cover of a new-to-us picture book with lighter fluid and then handing it to my toddler to munch on. Which might have occurred to him, too, because he twitched those eyebrows my way once more and (still scrubbing) said, “Or lemon oil.”
That bookstore was an odd one: it occupied what had once been a house, so small rooms extended back warren-like from the entryway. Nonfiction and cookbooks filled a narrow, low-ceilinged sunroom to the left; literature lined the walls of a small bedroom to the right. The hallway shelves held books that didn’t fit anywhere else: a few dozen “esoteric” books, a smattering of celebrity biographies, a shelf here and there dedicated to obscure branches of science. The owner told me once that he’d deliberately shelved the romance novels near the back bathroom, in a dimly lit corner, because who wants them? And he shrugged.
That bookstore is gone now—along with Latte Books, Cozy Corner Books, and Michael’s—but back when the owner was still padding from room to room in his stocking feet, I liked to explore the corners of the warren, finding odd genres in little closets and bringing home books with other people’s names in the cover.
Because that’s my favorite part of collecting used books: they belonged to someone else first. One of the first things I do when I buy a used book is flip to the inside front cover where, on a good day, I’ll find a name—inscribed in ball point or pencil or subtly translucent fountain pen—or an ex libris sticker or an address stamp.
On a better day, I’ll find an inscription, though these are bittersweet, since the book has only reached my shelves because whoever received that heartfelt note no longer wants (or can keep) the book. I recently found a book inscribed to someone who shared my name which, if you are also named Théa, you know is an incredibly rare occurrence. Naturally, I bought that book.
But on the very best days, I find a bookmark—some little remnant of the previous owner’s life pressed between the pages. A complementary bookmark from some other bookstore, perhaps, or a folded receipt, or a business card printed either on vellum or on paper so well-handled that it’s grown translucent.
Once: a photograph, a candid shot of two children. Once: a wallet-sized 1980 calendar from the Hallmark in Anchorage. Once: a pressed leaf. Once: an ink drawing I’d done during my riot grrrl days. I felt sure I hadn’t given it to my dad—it was too moody and weird for that—but here it was, preserved in his book like it was a pretty row of tulips drawn when I was six.
What a reader tucks in a book’s pages tells you one thing about them; what they highlight and underline and star and dialogue with in the margins, though—that tells you something else. I have friends who cringe when they hear the word “underline,” and I understand—and yet, I do it compulsively and unapologetically. And when I encounter someone else’s notes as I read, I find that my reading feels suddenly less solitary and more communal.
One of my favorite books was a gift from a friend—a book on writing by two professors we both studied under in college. She gave me a copy years ago for my birthday, but it was only once I began reading it that I realized she’d given me her copy: I recognized her handwriting in the margins and her stars alongside certain passages. I’m re-reading that book right now, and I love the layers its built up, between her notes and mine, made in separate passes over the years as I’ve read and re-read.
The books with my maiden name in the cover, or the ones with my mom’s maiden name, or that English grammar, bound in blue, with my grandmother’s name on the title page—these books become more to our family than the stories they contain. They are the strata of family history, a map of where we have been and what we have read.
This is why our girls have their own ex libris stamps and why, when I gift my daughters books, I always inscribe the cover. Maybe one day, these books will end up in a used-book store, sure, but maybe—like the copy my mom gave me of Amy the Dancing Bear—they’ll end up well-handled almost to the point of translucency, loved by another generation or two of our family.
It gives me a certain pleasure to smooth the dust and smudges off the covers of used books—I use lemon oil, and to me it’s the smell of a new-to-us book preparing to join our library. But what’s inside stays: the names and the inscriptions, the bookmarks and the dogears and the underlined passages—and the history.
Dear Théa,
As I read this book, I started to think of you. As I finished the book—Amy was you. I love you dearly.
Love, Mom
7th birthday, 1990
This article first appeared at https://thearosenburg.substack.com/
Featured image by Freepik
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