Found in books - 9

In an old copy of Treasure Island...

!!

Found in books - GUEST ENTRY

John Williams’s Stoner is about an English professor defeated by department politics and his wife’s unreasoning hatred. In the copy I borrowed from my university library, someone had written, on the title page, Oddly comforting.

- Jamie Fisher, in the LA Review of Books

Found in books - 8

In A Handelian's Notebook, by William C Smith:

If. Only.

Found in books - 7

In a copy of Salman Rushdie: Sentenced to Death by WJ Weatherby, a time-sheet for Talon Security Services Ltd, week ending the 4th of October.

Found in books - 6

In a second-hand copy of Louis Zukofsky's Prepositions: The Collected Critical Essays of... (expanded edition), the quite considerable but not at all unpleasant aroma of (consumed) cigars.

Found in books - GUEST ENTRY

I have discovered a truly marvellous proof... which this margin is too narrow to contain.

- Pierre de Fermat, in his copy of Diophantus' Arithmetica (as reported in The New Yorker)

Found in books - 5

Found in books - 4

In a freshly-delivered dollop of Chicken Shit for the Soul, by David Fisher.*

--
* Which is sold in some candy-ass countries, I've subsequently discovered, under the title of Chicken Poop... Lame-os.

Books I've actually finished lately: 47 / Found in books - GUEST ENTRY

[Jacques] Guérin now held a sad, tattered book in his hands, a first edition of Swann's Way, printed in 1913. Inside, on an intact page that escaped Marthe's ruthless effacement of all traces of Marcel's name, Guérin discovered a dedication: To my little brother, a souvenir of lost time, regained for a moment whenever we see one another.

- Lorenza Foschini

Found in books - 3

In a discarded library copy [for shame!] of WG Sebald's On The Natural History of Destruction:

1) A stamp reading

LANGUAGES, LIT/FICTION DIVISION
HAMILTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
55 YORK BLVD.
HAMILTON, ONTARIO
L8R 3KI

which I think says everything you need to know about Sebald's writing; the confusions book-folks get themselves into by trying to classify things (too cleverly or too simply: what is translated work doing under 'LANGUAGES'?); and the unanswerable but nonetheless interesting question of where exactly the line falls between literature and (all other) fiction, and/or whether it falls there at all.

2) A yellow slip bearing an invitation from BetterWorldBooks to 'help improve delivery times'. With which I would have no problem (in principle, you understand: I still wouldn't actually fill it in), were it not signed off

My friends look forward to hearing from you

- Sincerely, Your Book

Gah!

Found in books - 2

In a charity-shop copy of Michel Houllebecq's Atomised, a torn-off Hugo Boss label, advertising a fragrance called Deep Red, with a picture of a somewhat ambiguous model (pretty sure it's a boy) on the reverse.

There's nothing of any great significance on either page - except for a quoted passage regarding Heisenberg's 'first encounter with atomic theory'

The end of the First World War had thrown Germany's youth into a great turmoil.

and that only because atomic life is ostensibly what the novel is about (but isn't, because it's French and therefore Very Clever, despite being actually just about sex).

Manspray-purchasing Hugo Boss patrons do not strike me as the target market for this type of book, in England anyway (though I suppose the cover photo of a young woman in nothing but her pants might have something to do with it.) Rank snobbery, perhaps; but our invisible reader evidently agreed - giving up, as he apparently did, on page 22.

Found in books - 1

In my charity-shop copy of The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut, pages 27/28 and 59/60 bear evidence of having been turned down. Both pages (27 and 59, anyway) have to do with paying for sex.