Yes, it’s true, I had the desperately unsettling experience the other day of opening a book I had bought second-hand from a well-known on-line market-place only to find a previous owner had scribbled notes on many of the pages. That’s sacrilege as far as I’m concerned.
I buy quite a few second-hand books, sometimes from charity shops and occasionally from book stores, when I can get to them. It can save money, give me access to books that are out of print and, in the case of charity shops, puts some money in the coffers of a good cause.
When I make a purchase in person I am usually very fussy, but when I buy online that is not so easy to do. You do have to trust the seller to be honest with their assessment of the book’s condition.
However, whilst I don’t mind a book that’s a bit tatty at the edges, one thing I don’t want to find is that a previous reader has made notes in the book. It’s not because that might get in the way of my reading the words on the page. No, it’s that I find the whole idea of doing anything of the sort to be a sacrilege. It’s an act that violates the sanctity of the published work and forever defaces the book. It’s a crime. Offenders should serve time!
My recent experience has left me with a deep emotional scare that I am only very slowly recovering from. The poor book. I can hardly bear to open its pages now and see the extent of its suffering. Perhaps I will need to put it on the compost heap once I’ve finished reading it. That might be better than allowing it to continue suffering by handing it over to a charity shop, which is where most of my books go once I’ve read them. Somehow it seems like the humane thing to do.
