Professor buys her own copy of a book used on Amazon

Last week, one of my Facebook friends reported her improbable experience of buying a replacement for a book of literary criticism that had gone missing from her shelves about five years ago. When the package arrived and she got it back to her office, she opened the book to find her own name and the date she had bought the book: the replacement copy turned out to be the very copy that she had been seeking to replace.

Certain bookish corners of the internet have gone mildly nuts about this story. Yesterday, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s “As It Happens” broadcast an interview with her on the experience that touches on some questions of interest for our class: the significance of particular copies of books, the ways we use books that are our own, and the ways that books can circulate: we can hold and even own them for a time; some of them we keep, some we lose, give or throw away; and some—incredibly—come around again.

I’ve embedded a portion of the episode below, but you’ll need to skip to the 10:35 mark:

A couple of intriguing statements from Eugenia Zuroski:

I actually felt for a moment some anxiety that it would be weird to read somebody else’s copy of this book. Because over the years I’ve read it multiple times and I’ve underlined things and I’ve made notes in the margins and I thought it might be strange to read somebody else’s notes in this book. But when I opened it, the object felt very familiar. It was just as worn-in as the copy that I remembered owning. So when I opened it and saw my name in it, it was a really uncanny experience. But all my marginalia, all my underlining is in there.

She affirms that, despite somebody having walked off with the book about four or five years ago, she will continue to loan her books freely:

I’ve always shared my books, and I know that having them disappear from you is one of the things that happens when you loan things out freely. But I love books. I have a lot of them, and I like them to circulate, and I like to share the things I have. I like to share my reading experiences with other people. So I’ll definitely continue to loan my books out. And, actually, this adventure has been a kind of confirmation that I can do that. I can let them go and, if they really want to, they will come back.

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