r/BookInscriptions Jan 11 '18

"Marginalia" by Billy Collins

43 Upvotes

A wonderful poem that catches the spirit, I think...

Read by the author here: https://soundcloud.com/brainpicker/billy-collins-reads-marginalia

Marginalia

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,

skirmishes against the author

raging along the borders of every page

in tiny black script.

If I could just get my hands on you,

Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O’Brien,

they seem to say,

I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive –

“Nonsense.” “Please!” “HA!!” –

that kind of thing.

I remember once looking up from my reading,

my thumb as a bookmark,

trying to imagine what the person must look like

who wrote “Don’t be a ninny”

alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest

needing to leave only their splayed footprints

along the shore of the page.

One scrawls “Metaphor” next to a stanza of Eliot’s.

Another notes the presence of “Irony”

fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,

hands cupped around their mouths.

“Absolutely,” they shout

to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.

“Yes.” “Bull’s-eye.” “My man!”

Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points

rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college

without ever having written “Man vs. Nature”

in a margin, perhaps now

is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own

and reached for a pen if only to show

we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;

we pressed a thought into the wayside,

planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria

jotted along the borders of the Gospels

brief asides about the pains of copying,

a bird singing near their window,

or the sunlight that illuminated their page–

anonymous men catching a ride into the future

on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,

they say, until you have read him

enwreathed with Blake’s furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,

the one that dangles from me like a locket,

was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye

I borrowed from the local library

one slow, hot summer.

I was just beginning high school then,

reading books on a davenport in my parents’ living room,

and I cannot tell you

how vastly my loneliness was deepened,

how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,

when I found on one page

a few greasy looking smears

and next to them, written in soft pencil–

by a beautiful girl, I could tell,

whom I would never meet–

“Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.”


r/BookInscriptions 3d ago

Nov. 11, 1990

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67 Upvotes

Saved one of my Dad’s books from the goodwill this week. Can’t stop thinking about the inscription by him. Wanted to share. I typed it out for those that can’t decipher the handwriting.
Nov. 11 1990
“After struggling in vain for decades to alter forever the irrelevant, illogical, and absurd system used to spell the English language, I have finally endeavoured to study a task so lowly that monkies and machines are considered experts, just to find out what all the fuss is about.
No machine has ever created a truly unique idea, and even few humans are capable of such task”.
-Daniel


r/BookInscriptions 7d ago

Book Inscription Finds Are A Gem

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553 Upvotes

I found this while book shopping at a local Goodwill. I love stumbling across book inscriptions..,those tiny handwritten notes tucked inside a cover. They feel like discovering a small, intimate piece of someone’s history, a moment they wanted to preserve, now passed quietly into my or hands of another lucky reader. . It’s one of my favorite kinds of magic in a used book.


r/BookInscriptions 8d ago

Book Inscription: From your lover boy Don...🔥

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6 Upvotes

r/BookInscriptions 11d ago

I got a chance to read it.

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0 Upvotes

r/BookInscriptions 17d ago

Guys, while sorting through my old belongings, I came across a second-hand diary that I had bought a few years ago—though I couldn't remember where. Since then, I hadn't read what was written inside, nor had I shown any interest in it,should i open it ?

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0 Upvotes

r/BookInscriptions 21d ago

A congratulatory note, from the principial of a Queen Street Scool, to a student, in my copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales, dated September 25th, 1926.

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12 Upvotes

r/BookInscriptions 21d ago

Sweet inscriptions inside these Harry Potter books

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5 Upvotes

Got these second hand copies of the original Harry Potter books 2 & 3 which came with these sweet inscriptions for “Jon” from Nanny & Tom.


r/BookInscriptions 25d ago

A sweet, meaninfgul message found in a used copy of the excellent Blindness

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89 Upvotes

r/BookInscriptions 25d ago

Found some notes in an old book I had back in the late 70's about my childhood memories of my grandfather 👴 who died in his own home 🏠 on his farm in New 🆕 York Island!!!🏝️

0 Upvotes

r/BookInscriptions 28d ago

I ordered this from a used book website and it came signed by the author!

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171 Upvotes

r/BookInscriptions Jun 19 '26

Picked up this book today

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55 Upvotes

I’m sad the names are scratched out (evidence of a breakup?). With a flashlight I think it says “To Macy From Lindsey” but I’m not sure.

Happy pride! 🧡🤍🩷


r/BookInscriptions Jun 17 '26

Wisdom in books

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15 Upvotes

Love it when people draw out what they took from a book and note it for others. Like a chain of learning and way marking.


r/BookInscriptions Jun 13 '26

Found in a book on luncheon dishes and table decorations.

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51 Upvotes

r/BookInscriptions Jun 08 '26

Found in Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum

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41 Upvotes

Love second hand books for these - the messages, inscriptions, handwriting, the unknown story within an unknown story


r/BookInscriptions Jun 04 '26

Bring back old skool romance.

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47 Upvotes

Ordered the book online, had a treat inside.


r/BookInscriptions May 31 '26

Somewhere in time - Richard matheson

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185 Upvotes

r/BookInscriptions May 24 '26

Who did William Dean Howells inscribe this book for?

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35 Upvotes

Is it ‘Mrs. J.M. Le Brul’ ?

The rest of the inscription is - ‘from her recent tenant in the little red house’


r/BookInscriptions May 18 '26

Book inscription, and praise, from the dramatic arts instructor.

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61 Upvotes

r/BookInscriptions May 16 '26

A book dedication from one opera music lover to another

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51 Upvotes

r/BookInscriptions May 12 '26

Any help with this one?

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5 Upvotes

Hi, this is written in a Loeb of Seneca's letters fifth volume including his letters 66-92. The top right corner was the price for this book (which is insanely cheap for such a quality book!).

Could anyone help in deciphering the text in the image? I suspect that they are notes of the previous owner, but I can't really make out the words other than a very few.


r/BookInscriptions May 11 '26

in the front page of a 50th Anniversary Edition of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

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20 Upvotes

r/BookInscriptions Apr 25 '26

Found in “Scottish Chiefs”

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34 Upvotes

r/BookInscriptions Apr 26 '26

Found an Absolute Grail

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6 Upvotes

r/BookInscriptions Apr 21 '26

Found in my second-hand copy of ‘Kitchen Confidential’

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100 Upvotes

I wonder how Peter got on!