The reader already in the book

Text A: an original contemporary personal-essay-style practice extract.

The second-hand novel arrived with pencil marks in its margins. At first, I resented them. Somebody had underlined an adjective before I had decided whether it mattered and written ‘obvious’ beside a scene I had not yet understood. I felt that another reader had entered the book ahead of me and left the lights on.

Then the notes began to disagree with themselves. An early comment called a character selfish; eighty pages later, an arrow returned to it with the words ‘perhaps frightened instead’. A question mark challenged an underlined sentence. What had looked like a set of instructions became a record of somebody revising a judgement. I was not following the previous reader’s route so much as watching that route change.

I would not want every book covered in commentary, and sellers should say when a copy has been heavily annotated. Given the choice, however, I would sometimes choose one. The pencil created a second chair at the reading table. I could agree, object or notice what the earlier reader had missed, while knowing that my own marks might one day continue the conversation.

Text B: an original contemporary review-style practice extract.

I opened an annotated book hoping that the marks would add interest. Instead, they repeatedly arrived before the writing itself had been allowed to work. A sentence was boxed and labelled ‘important’. A character’s first appearance was accompanied by the word ‘unreliable’. Before I could form a suspicion, somebody else’s certainty was waiting in the margin.

The notes may have been thoughtful responses when they were first written, but in a shared copy they became a commentary track I could not switch off. Even when I disagreed, the pointing finger remained. I began reading around the marks: expecting a twist where a phrase had been circled, or searching for a symbol because an arrow told me to look again.

Readers should be free to write in books they own. Annotated copies can also be useful to people who actively want to study another response. The problem is the absence of choice. Booksellers and lending organisations should identify copies containing extensive notes and keep unmarked alternatives where possible. A page should have the opportunity to speak before a stranger in the margin explains what it is supposed to say.

Compare how the writers present their ideas and perspectives about reading books that contain another reader’s notes. Support your comparisons with detailed references to both texts.