Letter to a future lover : marginalia, errata, secrets, inscriptions, and other ephemera found in libraries
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references.

Readers of physical books leave traces: marginalia, slips of paper, fingerprints, highlighting, inscriptions. All books have histories, and libraries are not just collections of books and databases but a medium of long-distance communication with other writers and readers. Letter to a Future Lover collects several dozen brief pieces written in response to library ephemera -- with "library" defined broadly, ranging from university institutions to friends' shelves, from a seed library to a KGB prison library -- and addressed to readers past, present, and future. Through these idiosyncratic essays, Ander Monson reflects on the human need to catalog, preserve, and annotate; the private and public pleasures of reading; the nature of libraries; and how the self can be formed through reading and writing.