BENGALURU: A note in cursive writing adorning a second hand book can be a make or break deal for buyers. While it could make the book standout for one person, for some other it could turn into a spoiler.
With the number of book lovers in the city growing with each passing day, City Express spoke to a few who have come across handwritten notes on a book or have written one before passing it on.
Rekha Jain, a student from a city-based college recently bought Bitter Chocolate written by Pinki Virani. What was unique about this book was it was torn.
“Though I could have straightaway kept the book back in the rack, the note written along with it made it worth buying.
“It said ‘Sorry, but the book is worth a read’ and had an arrow mark pointing towards the part where it was torn. That convinced me to pick the book,” she says.
“The condition of the book somehow made me relate to the topic the book speaks about,” she adds.
Wanting to read about photography Deepthi Krishnamurthy, picked a book titled Looking at Photographs by Szarhowski. The freelance content writer later found a note dated February 17, 2004.
It said, “For Nicola, Happy Birthday! This is a classic for your photography collection.” While Deepthi felt happy to have got the copy as it made her a part of the bigger community that reads books. “But at the same time I feel guilty as the book and the note is meant for someone else,” she says.
Sharath Krishnaswami, enjoys writing notes in books which are mostly his perspective on the book relating it to the current era.
Giving an example he says, “While I was reading The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, I could relate to how we human beings are driven by instincts sometimes and Kipling strikes a chord with that trait in the book. The message I have written on it is: ‘What are we, but animals’.”
While notes made a book stand out from other copies of the same book, Krishna Gowda, owner of Bookworms, says the notes don’t affect the way readers buy books.
“It might in fact just spoil the look of the book. People don’t go by notes, but I have noticed that the book covers do affect the way they buy books,” he adds.
He recalls some of the notes he saw on the books at his store. “One IPS officer’s wife had written a note for her husband which read something like ‘Should our stale relationship continue or you want to change it?’ Another one again spoke about the bad marriage the couple was in. I don’t remember the message though,” he says.