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I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. After four years of commuter marriage, my wife and I decided it was time to live under one roof, no more semi-weekly flights or separate

household expenses. We amicably settled on matters like which sofas to keep and whose Netflix account to close.

And then a full-blown argument arose over books. What to do with our books? She wanted to combine our libraries. Oh no

no no I wanted separate shells in respective offices. My reason? She desecrates books. She demolishes them. She underlines. She circles. She slashes. Her

marginalia looks like a mind in gladiatorial combat.

When I stumble upon her reading in our home, I silently cringe, then back out of the room,

alarmed at her pen raised like a weapon.

First editions, rare editions, she has no guilt, no remorse.

I guilt? No remorse? I, on the other hand, keep books behind glass display cases and protectively wrapped dust jackets tied with cotton twill ribbons.

One year I searched online for the proper gloves to use when handling books. Turns out on books are sacred. Thanks to my family's strong emphasis on literacy as a means of

social ascension. And back in high school a handed down textbook, say, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, or Shelley's Frankenstein, usually

contained a decade's worth of teenage jokes and scribbling's.

I cherish new copies of textbooks.

I took notes in black composition notebooks, not on those pristine pages.

Used bookstores are a challenge for me.

I am a quiet, pensive reader.

D.D. is a physical reader and tells me that marking a book is a way of remembering,

a way to be in dialogue, a way of doing more than passively absorbing ideas, but a way of owning

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