Marks left in books

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

The second-hand walking guide seemed to have acquired another author. Beside a description of a hilltop view, somebody had written, in pencil, “better at dusk”. A suggested picnic place had been firmly crossed out and replaced with “too many wasps”. At first, these remarks irritated me. I wanted to discover the route, not follow a stranger who had already planted opinions along it.

Yet the pencilled traveller proved less controlling than I had feared. Where the printed directions became vague, a small arrow clarified the turn. Next to a steep path, the stranger had added, “short, but save your breath”. That warning made me laugh when I arrived panting at the top. The notes did not prevent my own experience; sometimes they gave it company. They reminded me that the book had been carried through real weather rather than stored in perfect silence.

I am not defending every mark made in every book. The word “brilliant!!!” appeared beside several ordinary paragraphs and contributed little except enthusiasm. Nor would I write across a borrowed book without permission. However, in this guide, the light pencil marks felt temporary and specific, more like footsteps than fences. Before passing the book on, I added one observation beside a sheltered wall: “warm here at lunchtime”. It was not an instruction. It was simply something another walker might be glad to know.

Text B: an original contemporary literary-column-style practice extract.

A friend recently returned my novel with a second voice running through it. In the margins, this voice laughed before I had reached the joke, warned me not to trust a character and announced that a later chapter would “change everything”. My friend had meant to share the pleasure of reading. Instead, the comments stood at each doorway telling me what expression to wear when I entered.

We often recommend books because we want to discuss them, so perhaps it seems unfriendly to object. I do not want reading to become a ceremony performed alone. I simply want the conversation to begin after I have had a chance to form a thought worth contributing. A clean margin does not forbid discussion. It allows two readers to arrive separately before comparing where they went.

There was one addition I kept. On the inside cover, my friend had written a short note explaining that the ending had helped her reconsider an old disagreement. Unlike the comments scattered through the chapters, this message did not predict my reactions or compete with the novelist’s sentences. It was addressed to me, and I could return to it when I chose. Write a dedication, send a message or argue with me over tea. But leave the unwritten spaces beside the story open: their emptiness is part of the welcome offered to the next reader.