The blank page at the end of a book gives the reader a place the author did not occupy.

Every finished work leaves an edge where the maker stopped and the audience begins. That empty space is not a flaw in the book, it is the room where your own response happens, and the author cannot enter it, cannot argue with what you conclude, cannot see what the work did to you. The making ends; the meaning keeps going without its maker.

Use the space instead of closing the cover on it. After something lands on you, take a few minutes to say what changed, in your own words, before the next input arrives. The thinking you do at the edge of somebody else’s work is often the most original thinking you will do all week.