the marginalia

she’s reading the marriage plot, loving & hating reading it. the book itself is absorbing, “madeleine is just like me fr,” distracting her from the recent illness which has dropped her bmi to the inflection point where (assuming an equal gender ratio) straight women look her over more/longer than straight men.¹ she can’t quite say it’s good yet because she has a habit of reading books avidly then turning against them on a dime at the end, but she at least can look forward to the certainty of being able to talk it over with people she likes talking books with. but someone with studyblr handwriting & a purple/green/blue set of gel pens has plagued her with the worst set of notes she has ever seen in a secondhand book. the title page is marked with “Madeleine Hanna (Maddy)” as if maddy is an obscure russian diminutive & not the most common girl’s nickname in the country. it also says “Men: Mitchell Grammaticus, Leonard Bankhead, Larry Pleshette” as if without this aid one might forget. normally marginalia trails off after 50-odd pages but, predictably, this notetaker was diligent to the last, underlining busily, writing “irony” next to every joke, “subtext” in places with no subtext, “why?” next to every plot development, and “discuss” exactly once per chapter. it wouldn’t bother our reader so much except she wonders whether anyone taking notes like that could possibly be enjoying their reading. though it’s annoying in its own right it makes her feel tender towards the book, as if hearing about a new lover’s negligent ex. it also makes her feel a tad misogynistic, an unbecoming feeling for someone who is so heavily pampered & cosseted by women friends, so she tries to convert the misogyny to elitism & be grateful.

1. i will not give a precise figure because this number varies by region.