The front end-papers are, to me, themost important. Some people reservethem for a fancy bookplate. I reservethem for fancy thinking.
This poke at "fancy" bookplates is a rhetorical call back to those who would attempt to weakly show only physical and not intellectual ownership by "pasting his bookplate inside the cover."
Adler creates a very specific and subtle definition of ownership as it applies to books.
It's not too dissimilar to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's idea of ownership or love of people. "Unique to me in all the world"
There are two ways in which onecan own a book. The first is the prop-erty right you establish by paying forit, just as you pay for clothes and fur-niture. But this act of purchase is onlythe prelude to possession. Full owner-ship comes only when you have madeit a part of yourself, and the best wayto make yourself a part of it is bywriting in it.
Many have spoken of "books as wallpaper" or "intellectual furniture", but here Mortimer J. Adler goes beyond owning them solely as material culture, but turning them into intellectual and personal culture.
When they sit upon the shelf after being intellectually owned, they can serve as a mnemonic touchstone, which is a method of supercharging their value as lowly "decorative wallpaper", and instead making them living active, intellectual wallpaper.
. Full ownership of a bookonly comes when you have made it a part of yourself, and thebest way to make yourself a part of it-which comes to thesame thing-is by writing in it.