Ink That Outlives Us

Used books, forgotten names, and the stories we leave behind

Saturday Morning Serial is the weekend section of Library Binding. It’s a personal corner where I publish short stories and essays on literature and life.

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Although I love a brand-new book as much as the next person, I have a special place in my heart for secondhand books.

If a used book comes with marginalia, that’s a bonus right there.

Also, inscriptions. They are the best. When the book is a gift, the giver often writes a little note somewhere on the front pages of the book for the recipient to read. Each one is a story in itself. I love them.

“I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone long gone has called my attention to.” –Helene Hanff, 84 Charing Cross Road

I snapped a few pics of inscriptions that I’ve found inside my own secondhand books over the years. I don’t know anything about these people except that they purchased the same books I did.

But I’m intrigued by the stories that lie dormant in the ink.

Here’s a sweet inscription from teacher to student inside a paperback copy of Frindle by Andrew Clements.

I can’t help but wonder at the story behind these inscriptions.

Why did Miss Stern give Steven this book? Was he a favorite student who loved to read? Or was this book Steven’s prize for selling the most frozen cookie dough in the school fundraiser, and Miss Stern used it as an opportunity for an atta boy?

What about this note from an experienced mom to a new mom (on her 40th birthday) inside Mitten Strings for God by Katrina Kenison?

This was written nearly 26 years ago, a few months after the clocks ticked into new millennium. Even then, Colleen thought that it was a “hectic world.” Were Colleen and Judy best friends? Maybe Colleen was a reader, and Judy wasn’t, so Judy furtively added this book to a table at her church’s jumble sale, feeling only mildly guilt-ridden.

Here’s a heartfelt inscription inside a copy of Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers.

Did Valerie have what we nice church ladies like to call “a past”? Did she feel like she wasn’t worthy of redemption? Is that why her friend (is it Gayle?) wrote those words “that includes you”? Hm, I wonder.

Some of the inscriptions are less wordy but still interesting. For example:

Who was Fritz? His first name tacked on after Clara’s full name… Was he her son? Boyfriend? Dog? Was he Aunt Kate’s dog? (Probably no dog is involved.)

My used copy of The Oxford Book of Modern Verse has this simple inscription penned on the inside cover:

Patty Freeman

from Herbert Lewis

Christmas 1939

Was Herbert Lewis desperately in love with Patty Freeman? Was this Herbert’s last Christmas before he left for war? Was it their last Christmas together ever?

Maybe the story is interesting and full of drama. Maybe it’s ordinary as applesauce.

A tiny sticker pressed onto the first page of this book tells me that this particular copy was sold by Burton’s Booksellers & Stationers, Ltd. located at 1004 St. Catherine St. w. Montreal, Canada.

The copyright page says that the book was printed in Great Britain.

This book probably traveled across the Pacific. In a suitcase or a shipment box, I wonder?

How many fingers on the pages? How many eyes on the ink?

It’s beautiful, thinking of all the people connected by one volume.

On page 297, I found these lines by Walter James Turner:

“Who shall invoke when we are gone
This glory that we knew,
Can we not carve To-Day in stone,
In diamond this Dawn’s dew?”

The poet asks, why can’t we preserve the present moment? We exist so solidly and gloriously in the here and now, yet we’re gone as quickly as the dawn dew evaporates. And there’s nothing we can do about it. Time will pass. We will pass. Then a family member donates our books to Goodwill.

It’s not sad, exactly. Our souls live on. And our books get reborn in the hands of new readers.

Psalm 90:9 says that we spend our years as a tale that is told. Some translations render “tale” as “sigh.” A breath—so fleeting, yet so essential.

We spend our years as a tale that is told, living the sigh of a story. Hopefully, an essential one.

What story am I telling with my life? Is it essential? Does it give life like breath does? Which of my stories will live on and get told and retold by my loved ones because the story, so precious, is well worth the breath it takes to tell? Will those stories inspire my great-grandchildren to love, trust, and serve Jesus? Oh, how I hope so.

So, what’s the point of this ramble?

Inscribe your books. Write in the margins. Live a story.

Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness! –Psalm 115:1 (for Valerie)

I’ll leave you with one irresistible indulgence—to get started on those inscriptions and annotations.

Your devoted,

Michelle

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