Its a Russian Wee Old Lady sleeper cell.
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I do that.
After years and years of building site management I can’t enter any building without looking around and notice stuff anyway. Come to think about it, I also do that around buildings. Stuff that was designed and done well, stuff that’s stupid, shoddy, needs to be fixed…
You can find good landmarks that way. It helps with finding your way around, especially back to where you parked the car.
And it doesn’t hurt to be aware of the location of the emergency exit and the fire fighting equipment.
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Or possibly Aornis?
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The question I have is: If the books are that hard to tell apart, how much does it matter if you re-read some?
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That’s pretty awesome, but you’ve neglected to account for the even more historical “Objectified Highlander’s” sub-genre.
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From the CBC article
Oddly enough, Grainger said there’s really no need for the personal codes. The library’s computer system already flags readers’ history for them.
I think my library purges its logs, so as to thwart the FBI.
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I think my library gives people the option of logging or not. (They have two public 3D printers and a vinyl cutter, so they’re pretty hip.)
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Typical software engineer mistake. Having the computer system flag readers’ histories is not in any way a solution to this problem. The wee little old ladies need to know at the moment they are browsing the shelves which books they’ve read. They’re not going to go to the computer and work their way through several levels of login and menus screens to answer this question, when they can just open each book at page 7 to check. They’re not even going to print the histories and cross-check. Opening to page 7 wins every time.
Sheesh. Software people. Failing to understand user needs since 1949.
(I should know - I am one)
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Back when used book stores were ubiquitous, my mother would do this on the romance books she traded in so she wouldn’t buy them again. And yes, they were pretty much that much alike on the back cover descriptions, and until one sat down and actually read a chapter or so, one didn’t realize it. I don’t know of any who are still in business around here any more. My mother now reads her books on a Kindle I gave her one year for her birthday so she can use the large fonts she needs these days, which is probably one of the reasons why the stores dwindled away.
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Kindle Unlimited has this problem too. It recommends a genre and I blast through all the books in a series until I must wait for the next one to come out. Did I read that one already? I figured out there is a cryptic interface that you can use to figure out what you have borrowed but Amazon continues to show books you have already finished in its search results which is quite annoying. They are great at engineering the impulse read of light novels but the rest of the user experience is sub-meh.
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Any useful library system would have to know the member and the book.
The self-checkout machines at the front know that from the library card (laser scanned) and book tags (RFID). At that point, the checkout could display which books are repeats, but that’s too late in the cycle.
A phone app would inherently know the reader, but doesn’t have an RFID reader.
A library loaner RFID reader gizmo could be keyed to the member, but Holy Malfunction! These are Wee Old Ladies who are still getting used to the idea that they can tap with their credit/debit card when paying for stuff. Too complicated!
I think the best solution would be to politely ask them to use pencil rather than pen.
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The question I have is: If the books are that hard to tell apart, how much does it matter if you re-read some?
I get this. It’s annoying to be halfway through a book that has up-until-now felt “fresh” to you and then realize that you know who the murderer was and why they did it. It’s like hearing a spoiler from your own brain.
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That’s clearly worse than the current solution, as someone might then erase their external memory. Would you want someone erasing your memories?
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Personalized ultra-violet ink stamps?
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Why is this even a problem that needs solving? Do you have some irrational prejudice against wee old ladies brandishing biros?
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The pencil suggestion was to make the librarians feel better. 
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Isn’t there an app that does this?
Naah, she’s gone shopping. Also, all sorts of strange things would happen.
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I’m one of the people who really love the physical object, the artwork of the thing book. But while I cringe on the idea of someone making notes or marking books, I think I can live with this specific case.
They are quite possibly not even properly bound, but glued together…
Also, it’s still better than the solution someone in the family had who, I must say, I am glad is already dead.
He ripped out each page he already read.
I never met the guy, and it is much better this way. Also, I had nothing to do with his death.
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