Comment by oniony

3 days ago

My late mother was an avid reader of library books. She used to mark the books she had read by filling in the loops of the letters on the copyright page. Apparently she noticed the hidden codes that other readers used to similarly mark books they had read: a circle around page 10, a line on page 20, &c.

I wonder if the author has come across such marks?

My late father would put a little star on the last page of the book. He eventually discovered another patron was marking books in a similar fashion and that they had the same taste in books. Whenever he found the other mark he would check out that book.

Do people forget which books they've read? If there's something I haven't finished, the sense of incompletion stays with me forever.

  • Yes. I believe they would not recognise them by cover but would think "crap I've read this before" when getting to a certain part of the plot.

  • Can't speak to OP's mom's experience, but I've heard of avid romance novel readers losing track of all the books they've read.