These marks are a sort of track, a set of traces left during a good read which one can return to years later (to discover that the locus of value has shifted over time - or even deepened at the same spot), and this seems apposite for Macfarlane’s The Old Ways. I have but a few examples of my father’s own pencilled marginalia which have survived various moves, and which I treasure it’s not a habit that eBooks easily permit, a sort of handing over of a relay baton. It’s a habit that offends some, seeming to be an act of disrespect. Now, not just because there’s an excellent second-hand bookshop just a stone’s throw from our new abode, I use pencil. As a student, I did this in ink, sometimes slavishly underlining entire passages. Some of my worst reading habits include adding marginalia and/or scribbling page-numbered notes in a book’s end leaves.
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