Hickory tree

I'm reading Stone Age Economics, because, well, because I thought it would be interesting, I guess, and it is—or at least, the marginalia that a previous borrower (for this, dear reader, is a library book) left in the book occasionally is.  I especially like the spiteful comments: things written in margins that don't clarify or argue with the text, or serve as reminders of what the noter was thinking, or refer to other parts of the same text or another, but are basically just fractious or jokey.  For instance, about halfway through the second essay Sahlins writes:

Enough said?  Nothing is more tiresome than an anthropology "among-the" book: among the Arunta this, among the Kariera that.  Nor is anything scientifically proven by the endless multiplication of examples—except that anthropology can be boring.

Our student informant has underlined "except" through "boring", put quotation marks around "can be", and written "is" in the margin.

Comments

[eb]

I think at some point I'm going to read that book. Although I've never gotten far with Islands of History - but that hasn't been for lack of interest.

[text]

I used to do that in all my text books when a lad, in hopes that some future school lad would get a snicker. It was rather like commenting on blogs.

[My Alter Ego]

Writing such comments in the margins of library books is what people had to resort to before the advent of the Unfogged comment section.

[john_m_burt]

I once got bored with a book, and underlined passages totally at random, and wrote marginal notes that were simply the text repeated, but in a hand so crabbed as to be quite indecipherable. No idea what any later reader would have made of it.