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Letter to a Future Lover: Marginalia, Errata, Secrets, Inscriptions, and Other Ephemera Found in Libraries
An exuberant, expansive cataloging of the intimate physical relationship between a reader and a bookA way to leave a trace of us, who we were or wanted to be, what we read and could imagine, what we did and what we left for you. Readers of physical books leave marginalia, slips of paper, fingerprints, highlighting, inscriptions. All books have histories, and libraries are not just collections of books and databases but a medium of long-distance communication with other writers and readers. Letter to a Future Lover collects several dozen brief pieces written in response to library ephemera—with "library" defined broadly, ranging from university institutions to friends' shelves, from a seed library to a KGB prison library—and addressed to readers past, present, and future. Through these witty, idiosyncratic essays, Ander Monson reflects on the human need to catalog, preserve, and annotate; the private and public pleasures of reading; the nature of libraries; and how the self can be formed through reading and writing.
244 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 3, 2015
28 people are currently reading
2120 people want to read
About the author
Ander Monson
29 books67 followersAnder Monson is the author of Vanishing Point; Neck Deep and Other Predicaments, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize; the novel Other Electricities; and the poetry collections Vacationland and The Available World. He lives and teaches in Arizona and edits the magazine DIAGRAM.
Although Ander is a proud graduate of Knox College, he also received advanced degrees from Iowa State and the University of Alabama.
More info is available here.
http://poetry.arizona.edu/presenter-a...
Although Ander is a proud graduate of Knox College, he also received advanced degrees from Iowa State and the University of Alabama.
More info is available here.
http://poetry.arizona.edu/presenter-a...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 98 reviews
May 1, 2017
Short version: I am not the reader for this book.
Move along, now, as that's probably all you need to know.
If you're still here, it's either to tell me I read this incorrectly and am a moron OR it's because you also read this incorrectly and want to feel kinship with another bad reader.
Ok, I guess it could also be because you just want to read the rest of my thoughts on this book because you are bored and are killing time.
So you know how when you're at that function and there's a sociology professor who is also a philosophy scholar and has done research on ancient Chinese manuscripts? And he's waxing poetic about things that have interested him and have given him many thoughts but he's drunk. Or stoned. Most likely, both? That's how this reads to me.
Part of that is my own fault. I went into this thinking it was something completely different. I actually thought it was written by a librarian or a team of librarians because the book I thought this was is what my co-workers and I have often considered publishing.
Let's look at the title: Letters to a Future Lover : Marginalia, Errata, Secrets, Inscriptions, and Other Ephemera Found in Libraries (Librarian sidenote: you can see the title is on a check-out card but had this been a real check out card, only the L in "Letter" would have been capitalized because some typesets had capitals that took up 1.5 to 2 spaces so in order to be able to cram all the words possible on one card, only the first word or any proper nouns were capitalized and that is a holdover even today when we don't have to worry about that kind of thing) Anyway, so I totally misunderstood the title and assumed that the letters to the future lovers were not actually letters nor were they directed at lovers of the letter-writers. I thought, based on the title subfield, that the author had compiled pieces and parts and notes and scratching found in library books and then wondered what they meant, positing potential life stories for the people who left those bits of themselves behind for others to find, whether intentional or not. I mean, this is a common occurance in libraries. You get books back and you find things inside and sometimes those things are treasures, like notes written to a grandparent from a young child or shopping lists for a birthday party. Sometimes, they're sad things, like a hospital bracelet or a report card that isn't so great but wasn't even worth keeping. Sometimes, there's money. Sometimes, there are entire rants in the margins. Whatever it is, though, it causes pause among the staff because the nosy ones (me) want to know the story behind these tiny pieces of someone else's life. We make up stories if we can't figure out the truth, the whole "The man in the gabardine suit is a spy" thing. It's fun!
I thought that's what this book was. I thought it was a real-life S.
It's not.
I'm at fault for making that assumption and getting my hopes up.
I'm going to have to continue to make do with FOUND
But back to the book.
To me, this read more like the off-the-cuff party discussions of an erudite man who loves words and wordplay, is steeped in Academia but who wants us to know that he is aware of current culture. When I was very young, I found these men charming and mesmerizing. When I was less young, the mesermizing ceased and the charm soon followed. Now that I am old and decrepit, I tend to find this type of eloquence irritating and grating. I don't have time for such nonsense.
The letters to future lovers, which I'm going to now call essays, are arranged alphabetically, which, as the author notes, is arbitrary (haha. arbitrary starts with A. So much with the wordplay), starting with the letter A and a picture of the date due slip in the front of Pierce Butler's Books and Libraries in Wartime It has one checkout date (Feb 17 '47) and underneath that is the word "Stuff" (maybe "Staff") written in pencil. Because, you know, this is the beginning of a book about things found in libraries so may as well start with what you see at the beginning of a library book, right? Yes. Good. I like that.
And then everything goes awry.
Now again, I had hopes and expectations and they were not met so I was disappointed. That's all my fault, not the author's, though perhaps the title could have been a little less misleading, though again, maybe it's only misleading to someone like me, who took it literally because I work in a library.
The thing is, though, these essays, which focus mainly on books and somewhat on libraries and mostly on the written word and all the things you can do with it to take on the appearance of cleverness, don't have much to do with things left behind by library patrons. That topic is touched upon but it's less about the meaning of the bits and bobs and more about the things the author thinks about after examining the bits and bobs. For instance, there are several essays in the D's called Dear Defacer in which the author addresses vandals who have written in library books and magazines (and were apparently caught, one even banned from the library). Each essay begins with a picture of the vandal's work, but it's a snippet, you don't see the entire page so you can't read all of what the vandal read that provoked the angry penning of thoughts in margins, thereby putting the context solely on the essay, not on the item in question and the response it illicited from an angry borrower. And then the essay goes off the rails into odd territory that doesn't really pertain to the vandal, except in the case where the author does not like that the vandal is angry to find that Emily Dickenson was a lesbian and the vandal uses a dash in his/her penned complaint so the author turns the essay into a dashful sort of slam poetry thing, yelling at the vandal for defacing the page about Emily Dickenson.
And then in the next Dear Defacer, he takes on someone who notated the Valley of the Moon collection at the Arizona Historical Society and he says, What I wish was that I could ask you questions and you could answer about your heart and what it holds and what you mean to do with it. But they won't tell me your name. Discretion is more than you deserve. Or maybe you deserve to have your name erased from every library, your card revoked, your account erased from the database. You tried hard to put your words into the world, and I suppose you have. Perhaps in reproducing them I multiply your force. Possibly I see my adolescent self diminished in your scrawl. But I can't just shrug you off. You are a darkness that I need to better know. And I hope that's all metaphorical and he didn't really ask the staff for the name of the person who defaced these documents, that he doesn't really want to hunt the person down and ask why, WHY, for the love all all things printed, the defacer wrote on precious pieces of paper and what was meant by the scibblings. Because that would be insane and, also, he is not the library/archives police.
Most of the essays, though, have nothing to do with marginalia, errata, secrets, inscriptions, or any other ephemera found in libraries and even the term library is stretched as one of the items discussed is the barf bag on a flight from Tuscon to Denver, though it's attributed to being found in the Seat 10D backseat library.
The author says early on that this book can be burned in case of emergency, like if you need to build a fire to warm yourself during an apocalypse (paraphrasing terribly, here) so that's nice of him. He's got our best interests at heart. He talks to the reader a lot, actually, which should be endearing but, again, I think my advanced age mixed with my disappointment got in the way of me being endeared.
There were things I liked, yes. For instance, I loved the beginning of this sentence:
I have some love for you, dear afternoons, warm seams between what my life seemed like and what it is... which I found striking and evocative. But then it finishes with: ...actual, eventual, inhabiting my father through the books he loves to read, becoming my old self again via teenage marginalia, and now you're putting me on as if a cloak, for a moment, maybe more, running my sentences like lines of code. and I was once again irritated and cranky.
If you like this type of writing, you will love this book. I am more of a fan of the less is more, don't-spell-it-out punch which is nowhere to be found here.
I will say, though, that I LOVED this:
because this pertains directly to my job and catalogers still like to worry and fret over changes, even though many changes are for the greater good. Library catalogs are now easy to search and you can search the catalogs of libraries that aren't even in your country from the convenience of your home. It would have been difficult to fly to a library in Australia, wearing no pants (because doesn't everyone sit around pantsless while surfing the web?), just to see what they have in their card catalog.
So to wrap up this long diatribe in which I am a hypocrite because I'm totally spelling everything out and avoiding the less is more punch, I was disappointed in this book because it wasn't what i'd thought from the title but then I was more disappointed when I wasn't pleasantly surprised and delighted by the unexpected contents. On page 89, there's a picture of the corner of How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading (nope, not kidding) in which Mr. Adler has posed "Everyone, I think, will admit that a book is a wor[k of] art" and someone has pointed to that sentence and has written in the margin, "Not this one" and my heart went out to that disgruntled reader because, I'm right there with ya, dude. Not this one, indeed.
karen has this on her To read list and I hope she reads it soon because she could very well read this correctly and I want to know what that looks like. I think Miriam should also read this, actually, for similar reasons. Ok, Miriam? Get this from your library and be all meta and stuff.
Move along, now, as that's probably all you need to know.
If you're still here, it's either to tell me I read this incorrectly and am a moron OR it's because you also read this incorrectly and want to feel kinship with another bad reader.
Ok, I guess it could also be because you just want to read the rest of my thoughts on this book because you are bored and are killing time.
So you know how when you're at that function and there's a sociology professor who is also a philosophy scholar and has done research on ancient Chinese manuscripts? And he's waxing poetic about things that have interested him and have given him many thoughts but he's drunk. Or stoned. Most likely, both? That's how this reads to me.
Part of that is my own fault. I went into this thinking it was something completely different. I actually thought it was written by a librarian or a team of librarians because the book I thought this was is what my co-workers and I have often considered publishing.
Let's look at the title: Letters to a Future Lover : Marginalia, Errata, Secrets, Inscriptions, and Other Ephemera Found in Libraries (Librarian sidenote: you can see the title is on a check-out card but had this been a real check out card, only the L in "Letter" would have been capitalized because some typesets had capitals that took up 1.5 to 2 spaces so in order to be able to cram all the words possible on one card, only the first word or any proper nouns were capitalized and that is a holdover even today when we don't have to worry about that kind of thing) Anyway, so I totally misunderstood the title and assumed that the letters to the future lovers were not actually letters nor were they directed at lovers of the letter-writers. I thought, based on the title subfield, that the author had compiled pieces and parts and notes and scratching found in library books and then wondered what they meant, positing potential life stories for the people who left those bits of themselves behind for others to find, whether intentional or not. I mean, this is a common occurance in libraries. You get books back and you find things inside and sometimes those things are treasures, like notes written to a grandparent from a young child or shopping lists for a birthday party. Sometimes, they're sad things, like a hospital bracelet or a report card that isn't so great but wasn't even worth keeping. Sometimes, there's money. Sometimes, there are entire rants in the margins. Whatever it is, though, it causes pause among the staff because the nosy ones (me) want to know the story behind these tiny pieces of someone else's life. We make up stories if we can't figure out the truth, the whole "The man in the gabardine suit is a spy" thing. It's fun!
I thought that's what this book was. I thought it was a real-life S.
It's not.
I'm at fault for making that assumption and getting my hopes up.
I'm going to have to continue to make do with FOUND
But back to the book.
To me, this read more like the off-the-cuff party discussions of an erudite man who loves words and wordplay, is steeped in Academia but who wants us to know that he is aware of current culture. When I was very young, I found these men charming and mesmerizing. When I was less young, the mesermizing ceased and the charm soon followed. Now that I am old and decrepit, I tend to find this type of eloquence irritating and grating. I don't have time for such nonsense.
The letters to future lovers, which I'm going to now call essays, are arranged alphabetically, which, as the author notes, is arbitrary (haha. arbitrary starts with A. So much with the wordplay), starting with the letter A and a picture of the date due slip in the front of Pierce Butler's Books and Libraries in Wartime It has one checkout date (Feb 17 '47) and underneath that is the word "Stuff" (maybe "Staff") written in pencil. Because, you know, this is the beginning of a book about things found in libraries so may as well start with what you see at the beginning of a library book, right? Yes. Good. I like that.
And then everything goes awry.
Now again, I had hopes and expectations and they were not met so I was disappointed. That's all my fault, not the author's, though perhaps the title could have been a little less misleading, though again, maybe it's only misleading to someone like me, who took it literally because I work in a library.
The thing is, though, these essays, which focus mainly on books and somewhat on libraries and mostly on the written word and all the things you can do with it to take on the appearance of cleverness, don't have much to do with things left behind by library patrons. That topic is touched upon but it's less about the meaning of the bits and bobs and more about the things the author thinks about after examining the bits and bobs. For instance, there are several essays in the D's called Dear Defacer in which the author addresses vandals who have written in library books and magazines (and were apparently caught, one even banned from the library). Each essay begins with a picture of the vandal's work, but it's a snippet, you don't see the entire page so you can't read all of what the vandal read that provoked the angry penning of thoughts in margins, thereby putting the context solely on the essay, not on the item in question and the response it illicited from an angry borrower. And then the essay goes off the rails into odd territory that doesn't really pertain to the vandal, except in the case where the author does not like that the vandal is angry to find that Emily Dickenson was a lesbian and the vandal uses a dash in his/her penned complaint so the author turns the essay into a dashful sort of slam poetry thing, yelling at the vandal for defacing the page about Emily Dickenson.
And then in the next Dear Defacer, he takes on someone who notated the Valley of the Moon collection at the Arizona Historical Society and he says, What I wish was that I could ask you questions and you could answer about your heart and what it holds and what you mean to do with it. But they won't tell me your name. Discretion is more than you deserve. Or maybe you deserve to have your name erased from every library, your card revoked, your account erased from the database. You tried hard to put your words into the world, and I suppose you have. Perhaps in reproducing them I multiply your force. Possibly I see my adolescent self diminished in your scrawl. But I can't just shrug you off. You are a darkness that I need to better know. And I hope that's all metaphorical and he didn't really ask the staff for the name of the person who defaced these documents, that he doesn't really want to hunt the person down and ask why, WHY, for the love all all things printed, the defacer wrote on precious pieces of paper and what was meant by the scibblings. Because that would be insane and, also, he is not the library/archives police.
Most of the essays, though, have nothing to do with marginalia, errata, secrets, inscriptions, or any other ephemera found in libraries and even the term library is stretched as one of the items discussed is the barf bag on a flight from Tuscon to Denver, though it's attributed to being found in the Seat 10D backseat library.
The author says early on that this book can be burned in case of emergency, like if you need to build a fire to warm yourself during an apocalypse (paraphrasing terribly, here) so that's nice of him. He's got our best interests at heart. He talks to the reader a lot, actually, which should be endearing but, again, I think my advanced age mixed with my disappointment got in the way of me being endeared.
There were things I liked, yes. For instance, I loved the beginning of this sentence:
I have some love for you, dear afternoons, warm seams between what my life seemed like and what it is... which I found striking and evocative. But then it finishes with: ...actual, eventual, inhabiting my father through the books he loves to read, becoming my old self again via teenage marginalia, and now you're putting me on as if a cloak, for a moment, maybe more, running my sentences like lines of code. and I was once again irritated and cranky.
If you like this type of writing, you will love this book. I am more of a fan of the less is more, don't-spell-it-out punch which is nowhere to be found here.
I will say, though, that I LOVED this:
because this pertains directly to my job and catalogers still like to worry and fret over changes, even though many changes are for the greater good. Library catalogs are now easy to search and you can search the catalogs of libraries that aren't even in your country from the convenience of your home. It would have been difficult to fly to a library in Australia, wearing no pants (because doesn't everyone sit around pantsless while surfing the web?), just to see what they have in their card catalog.
So to wrap up this long diatribe in which I am a hypocrite because I'm totally spelling everything out and avoiding the less is more punch, I was disappointed in this book because it wasn't what i'd thought from the title but then I was more disappointed when I wasn't pleasantly surprised and delighted by the unexpected contents. On page 89, there's a picture of the corner of How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading (nope, not kidding) in which Mr. Adler has posed "Everyone, I think, will admit that a book is a wor[k of] art" and someone has pointed to that sentence and has written in the margin, "Not this one" and my heart went out to that disgruntled reader because, I'm right there with ya, dude. Not this one, indeed.
karen has this on her To read list and I hope she reads it soon because she could very well read this correctly and I want to know what that looks like. I think Miriam should also read this, actually, for similar reasons. Ok, Miriam? Get this from your library and be all meta and stuff.
July 18, 2015
Letter to a Future Lover's cover promises marginalia, errata, secrets, inscriptions, and ephemera found in libraries. I was totally expecting funny stories from librarians across the nation about the oddball things left in library books. I've even heard tell that someone in my own library system found an honest-to-goodness cooked piece of bacon pressed in a library book. Bacon. As a bookmark. Maybe it's urban legend, but that's the type of stuff I was expecting.
Instead, Letter to a Future Lover is a collection of essays by Ander Monson, each inspired by something that he found in a library somewhere. Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention, but I don't think the premise was explained at the beginning of the book. It is, however, explained at the end: the author spent time visiting libraries, and he'd find some odd book or quote or periodical and would write an essay on a 6"x9" card and leave the essay in the book. So he was, in effect, creating ephemera himself.
This might be an interesting premise, except that each essay was very personal to the author's experiences and style of writing. Many of the essays had me shaking my head and wondering what the point was. For example, there's an essay about an errata card that he found in a book. I also think errata cards are interesting. But then, randomly, there's a paragraph and a half (out of only six paragraphs total) on Saran Wrap. I also enjoy "fun facts," so I might have enjoyed learning that Saran Wrap was originally developed for military use, except that I really wanted to learn about errata.
And this is not the only time this happens. Take this paragraph from an essay about a book with worn binding, and pages falling free: "The smell of milling barley comes from somewhere--not from here: we don't grow it here, I'm sure--so from memory, maybe, a new grain dream like the sort I've been having on my low-carb, wheat-free "Primal Blueprint" diet in which I have increasingly come to want to be chain-fucked by varieties of Doritos I haven't ever seen before on earth: Cheesegasm; Doppler Rush; Tastes Like Stacy, Maybe; Sudden Memory Extreme; Everything Will Now Taste Bland All Week; Evanescent Orange; Molesting Double Gloucester; Defibrillator for Your Cheating Heart; Recombination of Already Existing Flavors; Leftover Whatever; Extreme Squeal; Taco Chump/Champion; the American South; So Much for Your Mouth. You know the kind. It's new. It's Huge. It pairs--not well--with wine." -"Dear Maggie, Unbinding"
I do apologize; I don't enjoy writing entirely downer reviews, but this book just takes the cake! I really was trying hard to find some positives to balance the negatives until I got to this line in the second-to-last essay:
"It's true I stole this page from special collections."
Be still, my librarian heart. *takes deep calming breaths*
Instead, Letter to a Future Lover is a collection of essays by Ander Monson, each inspired by something that he found in a library somewhere. Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention, but I don't think the premise was explained at the beginning of the book. It is, however, explained at the end: the author spent time visiting libraries, and he'd find some odd book or quote or periodical and would write an essay on a 6"x9" card and leave the essay in the book. So he was, in effect, creating ephemera himself.
This might be an interesting premise, except that each essay was very personal to the author's experiences and style of writing. Many of the essays had me shaking my head and wondering what the point was. For example, there's an essay about an errata card that he found in a book. I also think errata cards are interesting. But then, randomly, there's a paragraph and a half (out of only six paragraphs total) on Saran Wrap. I also enjoy "fun facts," so I might have enjoyed learning that Saran Wrap was originally developed for military use, except that I really wanted to learn about errata.
And this is not the only time this happens. Take this paragraph from an essay about a book with worn binding, and pages falling free: "The smell of milling barley comes from somewhere--not from here: we don't grow it here, I'm sure--so from memory, maybe, a new grain dream like the sort I've been having on my low-carb, wheat-free "Primal Blueprint" diet in which I have increasingly come to want to be chain-fucked by varieties of Doritos I haven't ever seen before on earth: Cheesegasm; Doppler Rush; Tastes Like Stacy, Maybe; Sudden Memory Extreme; Everything Will Now Taste Bland All Week; Evanescent Orange; Molesting Double Gloucester; Defibrillator for Your Cheating Heart; Recombination of Already Existing Flavors; Leftover Whatever; Extreme Squeal; Taco Chump/Champion; the American South; So Much for Your Mouth. You know the kind. It's new. It's Huge. It pairs--not well--with wine." -"Dear Maggie, Unbinding"
I do apologize; I don't enjoy writing entirely downer reviews, but this book just takes the cake! I really was trying hard to find some positives to balance the negatives until I got to this line in the second-to-last essay:
"It's true I stole this page from special collections."
Be still, my librarian heart. *takes deep calming breaths*
February 4, 2017
I started out into the idea of this book, essays addressed to ephemera found in libraries. But after a few, the concept grew tedious, repetitive, uninteresting. A stretch to find anything to say that hadn't been said. I got halfway and realized I was never going back.
I think the original publication method of an individual essay in a journal was probably a better approach.
I think the original publication method of an individual essay in a journal was probably a better approach.
April 20, 2015
Another reviewer summed this up for me: not what I thought I would find given the title and description, which is fine (sometimes great magic is found in such a place!), but what I found I am clearly not the reader for, and what I found also irked me in the way one gets irked when one feels that if one were just this much smarter (a bit more like the author, e.g.) one would (a) not expect what one expected and (b) have been able to immerse oneself in what one found.
Tried to say that in a smart way, to make myself feel better.
It's entirely possible the fault is all my own.
Tried to say that in a smart way, to make myself feel better.
It's entirely possible the fault is all my own.
February 8, 2015
I have the crazy unbound box edition, which forced me to think about new ways to read it, because it was an odd artifact-- I didn't want to just shove it in my bag, because then it'd get beat up, and what to do with the pages I'd already read, how to keep it all together.... I felt, more than I usually do, that this forced me into a new relationship with reading, though it was one that was maybe undercut by the way all the pages were the same size, and all pretty stiff, printed on cardstock rather than regular (or irregular) book paper.
The book itself is a blizzard of ideas, many of which recur (mother and Michigan, Biosphere 2 and the guy who makes mazes, that weird town in TN (?) that I'm already forgetting about.... It accumulates, this book, except when it veers off in strange directions you've never considered before-- as a collection of topics, it too pushes you in strange directions, challenges you to recognize its attempts to hang together and its attempts to frustrate that.
As far as the reading experience piece by piece goes-- I have mixed emotions. Some of Monson's interests I share for about the two pages of exploration we get here. But others, I wanted more-- I liked the longer essays in the earlier books, the way Monson forced himself to yolk things together and make them coexist. I wanted more of that here, though it's obviously outside the project of this book-- and it's uncharitable to bitch about things the book doesn't want to do. But I do think it's fair to say this book's project doesn't allow Monson to bring all of his strengths as a writer to bear, to sustain a long and complex constellation of stuff the way that, say, the essay "Exteriority" did.
Still, quite a read, and one that will, by the force of its design, be different the next time I come back to it.
The book itself is a blizzard of ideas, many of which recur (mother and Michigan, Biosphere 2 and the guy who makes mazes, that weird town in TN (?) that I'm already forgetting about.... It accumulates, this book, except when it veers off in strange directions you've never considered before-- as a collection of topics, it too pushes you in strange directions, challenges you to recognize its attempts to hang together and its attempts to frustrate that.
As far as the reading experience piece by piece goes-- I have mixed emotions. Some of Monson's interests I share for about the two pages of exploration we get here. But others, I wanted more-- I liked the longer essays in the earlier books, the way Monson forced himself to yolk things together and make them coexist. I wanted more of that here, though it's obviously outside the project of this book-- and it's uncharitable to bitch about things the book doesn't want to do. But I do think it's fair to say this book's project doesn't allow Monson to bring all of his strengths as a writer to bear, to sustain a long and complex constellation of stuff the way that, say, the essay "Exteriority" did.
Still, quite a read, and one that will, by the force of its design, be different the next time I come back to it.
March 5, 2015
This sounded so interesting: Monson writes short essays about library books and marginalia or other things people have left behind in books. National Public Radio calls if, "So funny and so smart (but never smug)..." I think he is smug. He uses words, words, words, that seem to be meant to overwhelm a reader with his wit and wittiness that is so clever that I can't understand much of it. But, I'm not so very clever.
On Special Libraries: "Knowing an infinity is there and unknowable (for that is what an infinity is, unknowable, unfathomable, though we try to hold it in the word 'infinity,' we know that wall won't hold it long) is sublime;....Still it is a lovely list, a laundry list of possibilities, of libraries buried in laundries, as it suggests.
On Special Libraries: "Knowing an infinity is there and unknowable (for that is what an infinity is, unknowable, unfathomable, though we try to hold it in the word 'infinity,' we know that wall won't hold it long) is sublime;....Still it is a lovely list, a laundry list of possibilities, of libraries buried in laundries, as it suggests.
September 22, 2015
Ander Monson's new book is one of the most interesting books of nonfiction I've read. Though I did not have the opportunity to get my hands on the unbound copy (and I'm kicking myself for it now), it certainly brings up the question of what makes a book. It romanticizes the tangible nature of books, but also acknowledges the movement of time, the development of technology, and what it means to be a reader in the 21st century. Monson's lyrical essays are best read slowly, savored. They do not provide answers, but pose questions about the way we read, write, and consume literature.
July 8, 2020
Like David Markup’s Vanishing Point, this work started off life as essays written on index cards. But unlike with Markham’s work, Monson put the essays back in the books about which he was writing!! These wonderful short essays are lyrical musings that meander and chart, catalogue and cross reference—they are an undercover exploration of how it feels to be embodied when reading—instead of an intellectual journey alone. You can read in any order and feel encouraged to scribble your thoughts, feelings, sonnets, sketches or whatever in the margins… and one added bonus, the book itself is a delight. Love the cover and love the way it is bound. The paper invites readers to play. Playful… Playing around, Playing the lover, playing the fool, played for… I am planning to read his non-memoir next.
Recommended by a dear friend--thanks Christy!!!!
Recommended by a dear friend--thanks Christy!!!!
xx-dnf-skim-reference
September 14, 2018Listen, I can adjust expectations and enjoy something that doesn't deliver what it promised. And I can read poetry. And get interested in philosophical musings. But it's asking a bit too much to have me do it all in one book. Gee, Monson, get over yourself already. I bet the only time you smile at patrons is when you're high....
(snark only, for all I know he's a regular nice guy. Or a clean & sober troll. Or a jock. I have no idea, that's not the point of my frustrated comment ok?)
(snark only, for all I know he's a regular nice guy. Or a clean & sober troll. Or a jock. I have no idea, that's not the point of my frustrated comment ok?)
March 31, 2019
ooookeeee....was?
March 15, 2016
I went with 2 stars instead of 1 because I wrote it off and started skimming pretty early on so I didn't dedicate enough attention to it to deem it completely worthless.
I'm bummed because I had such high hopes for this book but it wasn't what I expected. I thought it would be things found in library books and that sounded really interesting. Some parts, like the political defacing in the margins of a book about homosexuality or the inscriptions in old books, were exactly what I wanted and I really enjoyed those. But most of the book made me think of a coffee shop where he's reading and everyone around me is nodding and snapping and I'm completely lost. I'm smart, I'm deep, I worked in a library, and I don't get this book.
I learned about errata cards, which I wasn't familiar with at all; are they no longer used since there are now book reprints and updated editions? I also learned there are Braille editions of Playboy (articles only), which made me laugh. Also, I learned that Betty Crocker was not an actual person but a character developed to respond to baking questions. Her signature was a company secretary that won a contest, she was played by 13 different radio actresses, and her portrait was changed seven times.
Critiques about this book aside, I would absolutely read fiction by this author because he has a vivid writing style. His memories of his hometown and the first library he visited were touching. "Living here you come to understand the silence is not so silent: there are the sounds of creaking wood in blizzard wind and the sibilance of soft snow through pines on moonlit nights. That exact sound is what I miss the most: to be in the trees not far from home as snow drifts slowly down. Then there are the interior pleasures: a breath-catch from the one you love, or the dying fire and a reminder of your loneliness. Hold on to it, that loneliness, that aloneness. Use it as a fuel."
It just didn't work for me on this topic because I wanted more about the actual "stuff" and less "him". It would get interesting but then he would ruin it with all of his 'blah blah blah' and run it into the ground.
A Few Quotes from the Book
"Wondering if I put too much of myself in the world, whether this set of selves I offer you opens me up too far. I know I can't take it back - what I wrote, what I said. It exists in small ways on and between pages, in private collections and public collections, intentionally and not. It exceeds me, the myth I make (the myth readers construct of authors - what we believe about those who write the things we love), like how some perceive RealDolls or avatars, characters in games or books. An author is even better: she made this thing your brain tangles with. Is reading her work like knowing her? Like loving her? Of course, I don't know who holds me in their hands today, who gathers my brain in their own and rubs it, how long and what for."
"We have our bodies after all, and they belong somewhere, with someone else, if we're lucky. And if our minds find another's in passing, a stranger's a decade or a century along, well, maybe that's enough: a way to leave a trace of us, who we were or wanted to be, what we read and could imagine, what we did and what we left for you."
"Everything we've written, what we've read, what we've collected, what we've bookmarked on what pages, what notes we left pressed herein, what we have included, discarded, defaced, lost and then replaced, how it's filed and organized: it's all a carrier, a vector, an edifice of us."
Find all my reviews at: http://readingatrandom.blogspot.com/
I'm bummed because I had such high hopes for this book but it wasn't what I expected. I thought it would be things found in library books and that sounded really interesting. Some parts, like the political defacing in the margins of a book about homosexuality or the inscriptions in old books, were exactly what I wanted and I really enjoyed those. But most of the book made me think of a coffee shop where he's reading and everyone around me is nodding and snapping and I'm completely lost. I'm smart, I'm deep, I worked in a library, and I don't get this book.
I learned about errata cards, which I wasn't familiar with at all; are they no longer used since there are now book reprints and updated editions? I also learned there are Braille editions of Playboy (articles only), which made me laugh. Also, I learned that Betty Crocker was not an actual person but a character developed to respond to baking questions. Her signature was a company secretary that won a contest, she was played by 13 different radio actresses, and her portrait was changed seven times.
Critiques about this book aside, I would absolutely read fiction by this author because he has a vivid writing style. His memories of his hometown and the first library he visited were touching. "Living here you come to understand the silence is not so silent: there are the sounds of creaking wood in blizzard wind and the sibilance of soft snow through pines on moonlit nights. That exact sound is what I miss the most: to be in the trees not far from home as snow drifts slowly down. Then there are the interior pleasures: a breath-catch from the one you love, or the dying fire and a reminder of your loneliness. Hold on to it, that loneliness, that aloneness. Use it as a fuel."
It just didn't work for me on this topic because I wanted more about the actual "stuff" and less "him". It would get interesting but then he would ruin it with all of his 'blah blah blah' and run it into the ground.
A Few Quotes from the Book
"Wondering if I put too much of myself in the world, whether this set of selves I offer you opens me up too far. I know I can't take it back - what I wrote, what I said. It exists in small ways on and between pages, in private collections and public collections, intentionally and not. It exceeds me, the myth I make (the myth readers construct of authors - what we believe about those who write the things we love), like how some perceive RealDolls or avatars, characters in games or books. An author is even better: she made this thing your brain tangles with. Is reading her work like knowing her? Like loving her? Of course, I don't know who holds me in their hands today, who gathers my brain in their own and rubs it, how long and what for."
"We have our bodies after all, and they belong somewhere, with someone else, if we're lucky. And if our minds find another's in passing, a stranger's a decade or a century along, well, maybe that's enough: a way to leave a trace of us, who we were or wanted to be, what we read and could imagine, what we did and what we left for you."
"Everything we've written, what we've read, what we've collected, what we've bookmarked on what pages, what notes we left pressed herein, what we have included, discarded, defaced, lost and then replaced, how it's filed and organized: it's all a carrier, a vector, an edifice of us."
Find all my reviews at: http://readingatrandom.blogspot.com/
May 6, 2015
This book gets high marks for concept and amusing illustrations. It definitely delivers on ephemera. The problem is its clever prose. Monson, evidently a writer of conspicuous originality, is content to conjure with platitude.
This quirky book promises something on every page (as I said, its illustrations are a treat) but merely palavers. I kept hoping for literate perspicacity of an essayist like Guy Davenport or Eliot Weinberger but found only – literacy.
Though a Bible has no built-in disposal ritual, and thus it can be burned, one should generally avoid burning sacred books because of fire's association with the devil and the underworld.Does Monson actually fear the devil and the underworld (that might be interesting) or is he just going gonzo? Sometimes he's a merry word slut; but promiscuous polysemy takes its toll on playfulness.
I kind of can't track that cant in that moment. Instead: deny. Think about it for a year. Let it percolate into a canto, canter, then speed up to a gallop, word that feels like a palindrome but isn't, until it achieves full-on self-lacerating, ramming speed, and squeezes itself out into an essay.That drains the joy from jouissance.
This quirky book promises something on every page (as I said, its illustrations are a treat) but merely palavers. I kept hoping for literate perspicacity of an essayist like Guy Davenport or Eliot Weinberger but found only – literacy.
November 21, 2015
I was suckered into trying this book based on David Ulin's review in the Los Angeles Times. In particular, I wanted to see how Ander Monson set up the interaction between author and reader. "Write in this book," Monson instructs. This line is followed by a blank space, like this:
Wow, was I tempted. But it was a library book, a borrowed book.
I won't tell you whether or not I participated.
Gave up: May 11, 2015
Wow, was I tempted. But it was a library book, a borrowed book.
I won't tell you whether or not I participated.
Gave up: May 11, 2015
March 13, 2015
I suppose some people will really enjoy this collection. I mostly feel it could have been superb in someone else's hands. Can I hire the South African writer Ivan Vladislavić to rewrite the book. Same concept and everything, but with a laser-like focus.
September 11, 2015
this was awful to get through. about a quarter of the essays were interesting and enjoyable to read. the other 75 percent was like reading a 17 year old's attempt at deep thoughts. I get what he's trying to do, but he just doesn't do it well. we get it - you are resentful of technology and the way it's changed library systems.
October 29, 2024
This was an eerie book that I had a challenging time comprehending as a whole. The most interesting part was a small transcript from late poet Steve Orlen's notes and manuscripts:
"9. I think too much. I will go on this trip to an unfamiliar place to find Joseph and talk to him and live in the present." (15)
"9. I think too much. I will go on this trip to an unfamiliar place to find Joseph and talk to him and live in the present." (15)
October 3, 2015
An ode to the connection people share with books, the author wants to connect with you, the reader. He wants to share his love of the written word, but also chastise those who feel worthy to write in library books. He cherishes marginalia, but comes down with full fury on those who believe their primitive scrawl would compare to the sacred text. It would also seem that the author may have a DFW fetish as the marginalia, footnotes and perhaps the University of Arizona connection might give that away.
While the essays are enjoyable, one could try Rebecca Solnit's The Faraway Nearby for a masterful take on the concept.
(From Solnit's work:
This is the strange life of books that you enter alone as a writer, mapping an unknown territory that arises as you travel. If you succeed in the voyage, others enter after, one at a time, also alone, but in communion with your imagination, traversing your route. Books are solitudes in which we meet. P. 54
Favorite passages:
Dear undergraduate, let me tell you about rage: the defacing of the pages in the university library makes me want to get my box cutter and rain terrorism on your wee, thonged heart. I am all for marginalia, and Adler argues for this, but save it for a book you own or wrote or at least hope to fill with interesting argument...p 90
You understand that this place breathes, expands, contracts with cold and breath, the infusion of new words: it yet shows signs of life in spite of what you've heard about the young and their reading habits. Treating a library as a crematorium for yesterday's knowledge does no one any good. P. 122
While the essays are enjoyable, one could try Rebecca Solnit's The Faraway Nearby for a masterful take on the concept.
(From Solnit's work:
This is the strange life of books that you enter alone as a writer, mapping an unknown territory that arises as you travel. If you succeed in the voyage, others enter after, one at a time, also alone, but in communion with your imagination, traversing your route. Books are solitudes in which we meet. P. 54
Favorite passages:
Dear undergraduate, let me tell you about rage: the defacing of the pages in the university library makes me want to get my box cutter and rain terrorism on your wee, thonged heart. I am all for marginalia, and Adler argues for this, but save it for a book you own or wrote or at least hope to fill with interesting argument...p 90
You understand that this place breathes, expands, contracts with cold and breath, the infusion of new words: it yet shows signs of life in spite of what you've heard about the young and their reading habits. Treating a library as a crematorium for yesterday's knowledge does no one any good. P. 122
March 23, 2015
As someone who has spent many years working in and enjoying libraries I see this library ephemera every day and it still is magical to me. Monson touches on the magical aspect of these found objects.
I believe you must be a poetry enthusiast to appreciate what Monson is trying to accomplish here. The writing is very free form and has the feel of a longer poem. Some passages are a bit focused on the author as subject and this switch in focus from the ephemera to the author could be a bit of a turn-off. I personally saw a progression of ephemera/marginalia--unknown readers to known readers to connections through books and ideas. I also appreciated the occasional contrast of the antiquated library to the current library.
I worked in a small Michigan library as a teenager and I remember the librarians typing cards and placing them in the card catalog. The more personal, often tedious tasks made the library somehow more personable to me. Monson touches on the "electricity" of these tangible objects and how technology may change things but the thing itself retains a special meaning. Page 20 last paragraph is my favorite passage. I also like the line, "Sometimes books are canyons that we enter seeking echoes of our thoughts." (Page 138)
I believe you must be a poetry enthusiast to appreciate what Monson is trying to accomplish here. The writing is very free form and has the feel of a longer poem. Some passages are a bit focused on the author as subject and this switch in focus from the ephemera to the author could be a bit of a turn-off. I personally saw a progression of ephemera/marginalia--unknown readers to known readers to connections through books and ideas. I also appreciated the occasional contrast of the antiquated library to the current library.
I worked in a small Michigan library as a teenager and I remember the librarians typing cards and placing them in the card catalog. The more personal, often tedious tasks made the library somehow more personable to me. Monson touches on the "electricity" of these tangible objects and how technology may change things but the thing itself retains a special meaning. Page 20 last paragraph is my favorite passage. I also like the line, "Sometimes books are canyons that we enter seeking echoes of our thoughts." (Page 138)
February 17, 2015
This was marvelously written. I enjoyed it very much, and found the poetry of the prose very moving. Though there was a sense of distance between I and the writer, there was no distance between myself and the words. They went through me and stitched me together, though I hadn't even realized I hadn't been whole.
Absolutely excellent set of essays. Ander Monson builds bridges with words-- bridges, and cathedrals, and dams. And then he breaks them all down, just to build something new. He has a great talent for the spoken, and written, word. He reads books as they should be-- not as one story, but as a thousand, and he expresses this perfectly in this book. Highly recommended.
I got this book for free from Good Reads First Reads.
Absolutely excellent set of essays. Ander Monson builds bridges with words-- bridges, and cathedrals, and dams. And then he breaks them all down, just to build something new. He has a great talent for the spoken, and written, word. He reads books as they should be-- not as one story, but as a thousand, and he expresses this perfectly in this book. Highly recommended.
I got this book for free from Good Reads First Reads.
February 15, 2015
I received a bound version of the essays from Goodreads First Reads. The first essay titled "A" made think I am going to love this book, but the remaining essays published in alphabetical order by title, diminished that initial opinion despite brilliant paragraphs and insights scattered in the essays. I wish there were more photos and illustrations to support the subtitle. To quote a sentence from one essay:" Sometimes you need to grow into a book, or steal and haul it across the country only to discard it, or just happen on it in a collection." I will need to grow into this book by rereading it in the future.
June 21, 2015
This book challenges the paradigm of what a library book really is.
Only being mildly courageous I only scribbled inconspicuously at the beginning. Then I was too terrified of censure since it is not, in fact, my own book. I have observed plenty of other library books with great marks all over the pages, but this is a brand new copy with February of this year on a new book sticker affixed to the spine.
I have spoken of reading this to several people. The reason I like it in particular is that not every book actively questions what it means to be reading library books. So if you would like to also enjoy Monson's quips, this is a quick read! Scrapbook-like.
Only being mildly courageous I only scribbled inconspicuously at the beginning. Then I was too terrified of censure since it is not, in fact, my own book. I have observed plenty of other library books with great marks all over the pages, but this is a brand new copy with February of this year on a new book sticker affixed to the spine.
I have spoken of reading this to several people. The reason I like it in particular is that not every book actively questions what it means to be reading library books. So if you would like to also enjoy Monson's quips, this is a quick read! Scrapbook-like.
Read
April 26, 2016I gave up at page 50. This book needs a new title. I thought it would be a Post Secret-type collection of various surprising things found in returned library books. Instead, it's just a collection of pretentious prose-poetry-type essays. Boring! Only read if you need to get drowsy enough for sleep.
It's amazing that crap like this gets published. So it gets no stars from me.
It's amazing that crap like this gets published. So it gets no stars from me.
February 5, 2016
Fine in theory, not worth it in reality. I would agree with another goodreads reviewer that the author seemed high or drunk or "something" throughout most of this book. The essays seemed to be more inner dialogue ramblings and just did not connect for me. This book put me to sleep EVERY night for two weeks. So, great as a sleep aid. Not great as a book. As an alternative that isn't filled with miscellaneous thoughts of a poetry professor, see http://foundmagazine.com/
June 2, 2015
the pictures and quotes are well worth skimming this book. the prose is often very bad.
June 3, 2015
This book sounds like an interesting idea, but it is poorly executed and a bore to read.
May 26, 2016
I feel like some of the reviewers here are needlessly grumpy. Like going to a vegetarian restaurant and complaining there is no steak. I appreciate this book for its artistry and I'm glad it exists.
December 18, 2015
I cannot even describe this book, that's how confused I am about the contents.
April 23, 2020
I'm a librarian, so guess what—the title alone intrigued me. I didn't know exactly what I expected from the book, but I was definitely captivated with the premise it gave me. A collection of "several dozen brief pieces written in response to library ephemera"? Well, count me in. I guess I was expecting romanticization of marginalia, errata, ephemera, and whatever stuff you got from the library, because honestly you did actually find these kind of stuff—it happens more often than you think it is. But ... ugh, I guess I expected too much from this book. Some pieces written for the ephemera are actually pretty nice, but most of it are just ... I don't know how to describe it. The thing is: I expected to connect with this book on emotional level. I find ephemera every now and then, it's part of my job, and some of these ephemera actually overwhelm me. I think I wished this book to express the emotions I feel about ephemera, but it didn't work the way I wanted it to be. Probably this book is simply not my cup of tea. I'm not sure whether to give this book a 1/5 or 2/5. I don't enjoy this book as a librarian and I don't think I enjoy this book as a reader either. This book has great premise though, so I guess I'll give 2/5 because 1 star means "didn't like it" and 2 means "it was ok" and ... yeah, this book was okay.
June 6, 2017
3.5 Stars (bound version)
For me, the genre of this book lies somewhere in between creative nonfiction and prose poetry, though I feel you'll enjoy this book more if you approach Monson's essays the way you would a collection of poetry (expect repetitive themes/motifs, experimental/unconventional sentence structure, no real progression/momentum over the course of the book, slow reading preferred). Monson does a really good job balancing abstract concepts with both metaphorical imagery and purely lyrical writing.
Personally, reading this in my last semester of library school, I had a blast getting his outsider perspective on my field of study. I've been a big fan of Monson's writing for several years, but I had no idea he had so much to say about libraries, archives, classification systems, and the way all these systems influence the experience of reading. This is a book that I'll be revisiting in a few years time.
For me, the genre of this book lies somewhere in between creative nonfiction and prose poetry, though I feel you'll enjoy this book more if you approach Monson's essays the way you would a collection of poetry (expect repetitive themes/motifs, experimental/unconventional sentence structure, no real progression/momentum over the course of the book, slow reading preferred). Monson does a really good job balancing abstract concepts with both metaphorical imagery and purely lyrical writing.
Personally, reading this in my last semester of library school, I had a blast getting his outsider perspective on my field of study. I've been a big fan of Monson's writing for several years, but I had no idea he had so much to say about libraries, archives, classification systems, and the way all these systems influence the experience of reading. This is a book that I'll be revisiting in a few years time.
August 23, 2025
This was so dope. Reminded me of the Borges stories, “The Book of Sand” and “Library of Babel” and now I need to go back and reread those. Glad to have read it on a kindle—it was fun to be reprimanded by the book itself for reading it that way, though ironic that my experience of the page was intangible. I am curious to see the hard copy because it is difficult to imagine the choose your own adventure format without hyperlinks. I loved the concept of following the links but ultimately
I chose to read it all the way through, which perhaps speaks to my psyche. I trust that the links were set up such that no pages would be missed, but I also felt irrationally nervous that if I didn’t read it conventionally I would somehow accidentally skip a section. Which I guess reaffirms a core idea of the book about reader autonomy in interacting with books.
I chose to read it all the way through, which perhaps speaks to my psyche. I trust that the links were set up such that no pages would be missed, but I also felt irrationally nervous that if I didn’t read it conventionally I would somehow accidentally skip a section. Which I guess reaffirms a core idea of the book about reader autonomy in interacting with books.
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