What are the best (worst?) annotations you've discovered in books?

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When reading "Girl with a Pearl Earring" I noticed someone had underlined the more obscure words, such as (this is off the top of my head) window sash, turpentine, bricklayer's hod, and written the translation of them very lightly in pencil in some gorgeous eastern european looking language with lots of e's and z's. It really made me wonder who the previous reader was and what language it was, the writing being too faint to make out whole words.
I loved that poem, by the way, Casuistry.

― Jocelyn (Jocelyn), Friday, 30 April 2004 13:59 (twenty years ago) link

I found this while I was the temporary caretaker of a library at a horrible little college. (This was a place where a previous librarian had Dewey Decimalled Joyce's Dubliners under "general geography".) When I came across the following, it made my day. (Not exactly an annotation, but still...)

Inscription found in a copy of E.E. Cumming's The
Enormous Room:

5 March 1963,

Dearest Bootsie,

I hope that you will love some of the people in this
book as much as I did. And maybe cry a little, too.
And that you will be happy that you have read it, and
it is yours.

Love from,
Ellsie

― mck (mck), Friday, 30 April 2004 14:11 (twenty years ago) link

odd, rather than good. i bought Funeral In Berlin second hand to tide me over on an 11 hour plane ride and towards the end there was one word obliterated - 'Brocks' as in the (old-skool) fireworks manufacturer.

(ha, looking up the spelling i found some pictures and Brocks were based in Hemel Hempstead which is where i bought the book. http://www.cyber-heritage.co.uk/eclipse/twone.jpg )

― koogs (koogs), Friday, 30 April 2004 16:19 (twenty years ago) link

two weeks pass...

Inside my copy of T.S. Eliot's 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats':

I wish I had more sense
Of humour, sometimes
Keeping the sadness at bay
Throwing the lightness on
These things
Laughing it all away....
(Joni Mitchell: "People's Parties")

To Stephen,
with love, thanks & apologies
Love,
Claire / Xx .. . .

― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 16 May 2004 21:10 (nineteen years ago) link

I once got an Ellroy novel (I think it was White Jazz) that had every swear word crossed out. Inluding blasphemy. It was almost impossibel to read and left me wondering WHY anyone so easily offended would ever consider getting an Ellroy book out. Unless they were on a crusade to stop bad language. Didn't work since my language tinged the air blue after about the tenth page.

― AnankeJones, Friday, 21 May 2004 08:16 (nineteen years ago) link

Maybe that reader should consider getting out the large print versions - I read a Robert B. Parker in LP recently and every swearword was replaced by a row of dashes! I am bit shocked that the publishers of LP editions are censoring in this way - it hardly follows that every visually impaired reader is also unable to handle swearing.

― Archel (Archel), Friday, 21 May 2004 08:46 (nineteen years ago) link

the library copy of Philip Roth's The Facts that I read a few months ago contained a full counter-book. all along the margin of every page some previous reader had written "Come on, Phil! A little maudlin, wouldn't you say?" Or "Boring, boring, boring - where's the sex stuff?" Hard to know what impulse held the guy as he wrote...

― David Elinsky (David Elinsky), Sunday, 23 May 2004 16:26 (nineteen years ago) link

A friend gave me his copy of "Writing Past Dark" with great annotations like: "Her perky lil face annoys me"..."Amazing, she can do a two page rift on peas" (sarcasm)...and on the back cover he's written "i love you just the way you are but love you too much to let you stay that way" which has nothing to do with the book.

bye

― PeanutDuck (PeanutDuck), Sunday, 23 May 2004 16:52 (nineteen years ago) link

eighteen years pass...

In a copy of The Iron Man by Ted Hughes, written in separate pages in red pen vertically upwards next to the gutters:

WWF vs. WCW and ECW. Bras + Panties Match Up at "Invasion"
(Bras spelt Bra?^es (fourth letter scribbled out, with e written above))

HARDCORe Mat^ch Jeff hardy (?) VS Bok Van dam. Winner Bod Van Dam

Tag Math Check Columbo shaun stasjock (?) Vs APA. winers APa. Farooq and Bradshaw

― the man with the chili in his eyes (ledge), Friday, 26 August 2022 11:28 (one year ago) link

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