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# The library book with someone else's notes in the margin
- URL: https://wire.ghost.preview.themeanax.com/the-library-book-with-someone-elses-notes-in-the-margin/
- Published: 2026-09-08T02:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-08T02:30:00.000Z
- Description: A stranger argued with this author in pencil in 1994, and they were right.
- Author: Priya Raman
- Tags: Books, Writing, #Import 2026-11-13 07:46, #Import 2026-11-13 10:08

Second-hand copy, 1994 edition, and from page thirty onwards somebody had been arguing with the author in pencil. By chapter four they were winning.

## The argument

It starts politely. A question mark here, a *surely not?* there. Around page ninety the handwriting changes size and the notes get longer, and by the final chapter there is a full paragraph on the endpaper that is better written than the chapter it is responding to.

> Somebody read this more carefully in 1994 than I was reading it, and they left the evidence in the margins for me.

![Row of worn book spines on a shelf](https://wire.ghost.preview.themeanax.com/content/images/2026/10/cover-10.jpg)

The shelf it came from. Thirty pence, and the best thing I read that month.

## What it changed about how I read

I started writing in books. Not neatly, and not for anyone — but the act of having to put the objection into words turns out to be the difference between disagreeing with a book and understanding why.

I also stopped buying new copies when a used one exists. About one in fifteen has something in it. That is a better hit rate than most recommendation algorithms.

## The endpaper

I will not reproduce it, because it is theirs. But it ends with a date, and initials, and the line *“will think about this again in ten years”* — which was thirty-two years ago now, and I have been wondering ever since whether they did.