Professional

Paris, November 2025.



There are many ways to read books. You can read with people or alone, devour the entire work in one sitting, focus on specific passages in search of information, or skim through it during a commute. You may also reread the beginning, certain beloved or more obscure passages that resist memory. Some people read by flattening or bending the book while others take care to open it at just the right angle so as not to crease the back cover. Finally, there are those who carry a pencil or even a highlighter with them so they can find their place later, who make notes to help them remember, update the book, or insert labels, bookmarks, or various alternative objects instead of dog-earing the pages.
Among these readers, some are professionals, while others are more or less passionate and regular amateurs. From our very first meeting, this professional enthusiastically explained to me the method he had perfected over the years of his training. He reads while writing, but never, ever on the page itself! He fills the back of small numbered index cards, which he slips between the pages of his books. However, there is no fetishism about this graphic space: he cuts out sheets of paper, the only thing that matters being their dimensions; the card must be narrower than the page to fit into the book, whether it is a pocket book or a large format. With regular, careful handwriting, he comments by copying quotations and the page numbers from which they are taken, and uses colored ink to distinguish his reflections from the text he is commenting on.
When he returns to the book, he begins with the cards. His numbered sheets thus literally construct the other text of what has become his book, opening up the possibility for him to move through time. His notes allow him to travel back to the moment of reading in the past, however distant, and transform his ability to act in the present: he can address his interlocutors precisely and formulate a concern in the situation, drawing on what he has already accomplished. As the photo shows, our professional reader therefore has the power to read with great precision a volume that has been closed, sometimes for a long time.