Studs Terkel diedFollow

[...]
Studs leaped forward, grabbed the book from my hands and flipped through it. What he was looking for, I had no idea. It was his book -- he wrote it -- so he already knew what was in it.

Studs shook his head.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Did you read it?" he asked.

"Sure," I said.

"But there's nothing in it!" he said.

Studs reached back and grabbed another book off a shelf. He flipped it open and held it out to me.

Now I understood.

Studs had filled almost every inch of white space with his own handwritten comments. In the margins, he had scribbled things like "Really?" and "Absolutely!" and "Forgot about factory jobs." He had underlined sentences and circled paragraphs.

I marveled at the whole inked-up mess. Apparently when Studs reads a book, he goes at it like a conversation, a debate, a two-way street.

"This is how you read a book!" he said.
[...]