Traces of Others

version

Well-known member
I'm reading a secondhand book atm and it's filled with annotations, but little to no text. One of the previous owners has just drawn brackets to the side of certain passages in pencil. I was sat reading it earlier and was suddenly overcome with the sense of knowing absolutely nothing about them. I don't know where they're from, who they are, why they highlighted these particular passages or what they thought about them. All I have to go on are these brackets.

Anyone found anything interesting in pre-owned stuff? Messages etc? One of my mates claimed he found a pubic hair in a book, but it was probably just a regular hair.
 

version

Well-known member
I've got a copy of Heart of Darkness from a charity shop that someone's written a message in.

Dearest Ernest,

Something to keep you busy while I dig out Conrad's full masterpiece. I know it's somewhere in the house!

Love you lots,

Amy

xxx
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
i'm reading dubliners at the moment and you can clearly see it had gone around quite a few times already. different annotations, made by different kind of people. one of them wrote her name on the first page and i couldn't help myself googling it. it didn't turn up any results though. afterwards i felt weird for doing so. i guess i was just hoping maybe it would turn out to be someone living in my street or something and it could become a beautiful love story.
 
Any scrutiny and exploration of intimate aspects of other peoples lives outside what they voluntarily present is fascinating
 
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