marginate

cf. the unread shelf, ch. iii. see also: dust collecting on chapter four.

to marginate is honest. it admits that the reader and the book have parted ways, but politely — with notes, with questions, with arrows toward passages that will not now be reached. the marginalia wing is composed entirely of such gestures.

a margined book is not abandoned. it is colonised. the reader leaves a small weather report on each page they did manage, and a kind of farewell on the page where they stopped. compare the footnotelore of others who marginated the same book before you, and the palimpsest beneath.

in a sentence:   "i have been marginating this novel since spring. by page sixty i had said everything i needed to."