Dogeared

From Namwali Serpell's "Muzungu," first published in Callaloo, republished in Best American Short Stories 2009:

Old like her father was old, a shaggy shambling old, an old where you'd lost the order of things and felt so sad that you simply had to embrace the loss, reassuring yourself with the lie that you hadn't really wanted all that order to begin with.

(What is dogeared?)