By Scott McLemee

... Is that a look of pity on the clerk's face when I answer why the book is being returned? The mistake happens much too often for someone on this side of old age, and it foreshadows a time, years hence, when I will stockpile canned goods and breakfast cereal by accident, through sheer absentmindedness.

In a few cases, I have accumulated two complete sets of an author's work. This has been deliberate, which may not make it seem any less eccentric. One set of volumes is heavily marked up. Key passages are underscored, with lines so straight it looks as if a ruler had been used; the margins filled with cross-references; the inside covers and other blank pages turned into a customized index. Often, there is a list of unfamiliar words (with the pages on which they occur) to be looked up later. Such was the intention, at least.

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