Book after Book

I have recently come across the controversial topic of book annotating . Does it make me very naïve that I didn’t even know this was ‘a thing’? Apart from a gentle spot of highlighting and note taking in textbooks, I have never considered writing in my books. Until I came to live in England and discovered charity shops – a concept that is still relatively foreign to Italians – I would have never even thought of buying a second-hand book. To be honest - for a good few years into my it’s-ok-to-be-buying-second-hand-books new life  - I would only buy books that looked as if they were new! No discoloration around the edges, no dents, no spine creases (oh, the horror!) and – definitely – no annotations of any kind. The price pencilled into the inside of the front cover was enough for me to have to put up with! Perfect books, that’s what I wanted. I would then read them with the utmost care so as not to create any spine creases and be generally as unobtrusive as possible so that th...