Marginalia

[gordonzola]

Because my last post struck a nerve, please post comments with amusing examples of margin comments from books you have at home. You may post anonymously if you find it too embarrassing. I will look for good examples in my own books over the course of the day and post those as well.

This is a good example.

Comments

I bought this used at a library sale

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

Chomsky and Herman, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism during the discussion of the media coverage of Cambodia overshadowing other massacres during the same time period, someone wrote in big block letters:

"WHAT'S THE POINT?"

This person obviously gave up on the book early because there had been comments on every page until they stop suddenly on page 25 and the rest o the book is pristine.

[ayun.livejournal.com]

I underline more often than I make margin comments, but I was re-reading a chapter of a linguistics book while studying for the exam and noticed I had underlined a sentence and written "But, well, duh" in the margin next to it, I guess as a note-to-self not to bother actively trying to remember something so obvious.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

when I write that it's usually as revenge for the author making me red something so obvious. Take that!

Amusing...

[captain-grim.livejournal.com]

A close friend has a copy of "On the Road" that she bought at a library sale in Ohio. How it got there is a mystery in the first place, but all of the margin notes have to do with the characters' "gayness" and are cross-referenced with anti gay scripture. It's pretty amazing as the whole book is filled with comments. Apparently cars blatantly represent penises and going around for "kicks" is a secret term for anal intercourse...

I want to meet that person, just so I can laugh at them.

Re: Amusing...

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

This is exactly the type of gem I was looking for!

[trixiefirecat.livejournal.com]

ooo i am a big book marginalizer, i wonder what people ever thought of what i wrote. it would be funny to look through books i read in high school and watch my underdeveloped brain try to be marginally witty. or not.

one thing i enjoyed was looking through my sister's books. i took french and ended up majoring in it, gained fluency, the whole deal. she doesn't have the pick-up-a-language-overnight gene, and when taking french classes that required reading, her notes are very rudimentary what the hell is even going on and then direct quotes from the teacher.

[walktheplank.livejournal.com]

I hate it when people write in books. Especially library books. That's like scratching someone else's records.

It still pains me to think of all the cool vintage paperbacks that my mother has ruined by writing in the margins.

Years later, she also ruined the value of my comics collection by writing my name on the covers -on the odd chance that I might lose them, or that someone else on the playground might try to lay claim to them. (Huh?!)

please post comments with amusing examples of margin comments from books you have at home.

I have no good quotes, though I did find some rather, um, interesting comments written in my original copy of "The Kestrel." ("Fuck you." "You suck dicks." -etc.) Apparently, my mother had taken it to work with her and lent it out to some of her students. Cute.

[vestalvixen.livejournal.com]

Here, here. I'm anti book destruction. Always have been, except for a short pre-pubescent time when i would draw naughty pictures in my art note books.

[rootlesscosmo.livejournal.com]

Volume 38 of Lenin's Complete Works (the English language edition published in the USSR) is called "Philosophical Notebooks" and includes notes he took while reading Hegel and others. It even reproduces his marginal comments, including "Ha ha!" (derisive, not appreciative) and "Boom! boom! boom!" to note what he thought were pompous inanities.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

with absolutely no sarcasm, I say that sounds great.

Statistics

[torgo-x.livejournal.com]

Comment found written neatly in a college statistics textbook: "gnarly squid"

Re: Statistics

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

Dude, totally. Hella gnarly!

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

Michele Barrett Women's Oppression Today: (Engels's The origin of the Family, private Property and the State) whatever its failings, has been highly influential in marxist thinking on the family and women's oppression ..."

"has been highly influential in marxist thinking" is highlighted and "This is why we must speak of its failings!" is written in the margin.

[superchones.livejournal.com]

I remember the high school copy of Lord of the Flies was filled with scribbles about glasses=civilization, pig head=rebellion. And everytime the word would come up again the symbolism word would show up in the margin as well.

Not exactly marginalia, but...

[oblomova.livejournal.com]

My copy of Fox's Book of Martyrs came with a card inside with pink flowers on it, bearing the legend "Thinking of you and sending you an inspirational poem by Helen Steiner Rice. Are you feeling discouraged, disheartened and blue? Is your illness hampering and hindering you? Perhaps this verse will make you aware that everyone has their hour of despair."

That's not the actual verse -- just the preamble (the whole thing would require stocks of insulin in order to get through it -- suffice it to note that the title is "Trouble is a Stepping Stone to Growth"). But the beautiful thing is that it's inserted in the book on page 54, right around the part where the Hugenots are besieged by foul Papist demons who "seized the gates and avenunes of the cities, and placing guards in all the passages, entered with sword in hand, crying 'Die, or be Catholics.'"

Talk about a "six of one, half a dozen of the other" proposition.

Re: Not exactly marginalia, but...

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

ooooooh, stuff found in books is a good subject too! I find something random in about every 15 SFPL books i check out. None as good, and well placed, as that though.