The first hint was on page 194. Blue ink.
I was a little startled. I mean, this is a trashy romance. The main characters murmur and gaze longingly. I was enjoying the story, but I wasn’t exactly on the lookout for grammar errors; in fact, I’d consciously decided to overlook some of them. And yet…
“As if”? I nearly laughed. This is my fellow reader’s quibble? I mentally shrugged, then moved on. Until it happened again. And again. And again. Someone had taken her blue pen to the novel and fixed “like” – and only “like” – a dozen times throughout the novel.
Wait. I lie. Once, she fixed a typo. Indeed.
I imagine her reading along, overlooking the missed subjunctive, ignoring the diction (minx!), letting the anachronisms lie… and then she hits her limit… “like.” She shudders. She thinks of the years she spent in the classroom, teaching students when to use “like” and when to use “as if.” She thinks of endless hours of grading essays, the constant battle against the demise of the English language. Her fingers tingle, and before she knows it, she has a pen – because of course she always has a pen nearby – in her hand, and she has made the correction.
Once she’s started, she cannot stop. The pen is uncapped, the errors egregious – at least in her eyes. Surreptitiously at first, then with greater and greater glee, she fixes the error each time it appears. As the novel climaxes in a crescendo of smouldering looks and husky moans, with one final flourish, she amends the typo in indeed and, triumphant, re-caps her pen. The world is now a little more orderly.
The next day, chastely, she returns the book to the library. Maybe she glances about as she slips the book into the returns slot; maybe she holds her head high, firm in the knowledge that she is right.
One way or another, I got double the pleasure out of book two of Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series: trashy romance, and proof that English teachers never really leave the classroom.
Persistence and Pedagogy 
This is a great story 🙂 so relatable
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I can imagine the joy you found in these markings and then turning them into a slice. It all comes through in your craft!
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Amanda, I hope your school year opened with success. I had to laugh at the typo errors. I guess the editor did a poor job of carefully scanning the manuscript. I also find this line amusing: “proof that English teachers never really leave the classroom”.
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These markings led to a fantastic slice!
They remind me of the underlined text you find in ebooks from the library. Ari is constantly questioning why so many people resonated with a given line. (He sometimes highlights lines in Libby in the hopes that it will draw someone’s attention elsewhere.)
I concur with what Carol said about “proof that English teachers never really leave the classroom.” How true!
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such gorgeousness, Amanda. I shudder at writing in a shared book, but I love where you went with it. Do you think it helped the person deal with their guilty pleasure?
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