The Back Page

I write the date inside the back cover of almost every physical book I finish, using whatever pen's closest. It started as a way to remember when I'd read the book — flip to the back years later and there's your answer, no guessing whether it was the summer before my daughter was born or three summers after.

Once I started lending books to friends, I made it a rule: finish it, write your name and the date under mine. That was the whole ask.

Most books picked up two or three names over the years. A friend, a friend of a friend, somebody's brother-in-law who never gave it back and I never chased it down. But one book got passed around so much the first copy didn't survive it — spine cracked, cover loose, held together with tape toward the end. I bought a second copy just so there'd be something left to lend.

The book is David Gemmell's Legend.

I read it every year for a long stretch, and I still pick it up most years. There's a scene near the end — I won't spoil it — that gets me every single time. Same page, same paragraph, and I know it's coming and it still gets me, which either says something about Gemmell or something about me… maybe something about both of us. I've stopped trying to figure out which.

What I like now, almost as much as the story itself, is that back cover. A dozen names in a dozen hands, dates stacked up like tree rings. Guys I still talk to every week. A couple I haven't spoken to in fifteen years. One name I genuinely cannot place — somebody read my copy of Legend and wrote himself into it, and I have no memory of handing it to him. He's just there now. Permanent resident.

The first copy is long gone — spine finally quit somewhere around name six or seven, and I couldn't tell you who has it now, or whether anyone does. The second copy is sitting right there behind me, on the shelf. I know the exact spot. One book so worn out it became unreadable, the other too precious to lend now.

Someday I'll track down a signed copy. Hardcover, if I can manage it. And I'll start the whole thing over — write the date the day it arrives, write it again every time I reread it, and hand it to anyone who tells me they haven't gotten around to Legend yet. Which happens more than you'd think. Mostly I just want an excuse to start filling in the back cover again.

Writing this makes me want to reread Legend right now…