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Do You Guys Write in Your Books?
“Most intelligent people do, Jason.” So I was told by another Member, when I said that I don’t. I guess it goes back to my schooling, when we were told that Very Bad Things would happen if we defiled the holy works of Wiley or Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Also, I always considered it kind of cranky: my grandmother would talk back to the author in her marginal notes (exclamation points were plentiful) and I always wanted to tell her, “You know, he can’t actually hear you…”
But it’s undeniable that these things can enrich the reading experience. Marginalia can be a source of knowledge not only about the text but about the context.
So: have you ever found any little gems in a used book? Do you go back and re-read your books and notes? What have you garnered from that?
Published in General, Literature
I really don’t care whether you do or don’t. It is a matter of style and training. Now, if you’re writing rude things about me, I’ll be there when you die to wale you up like corduroy.
So you’re the one!
“You threw out a Gutenberg Bible?! Those things are worth a fortune!”
“This one wasn’t worth a dime. It was scribbled all over by some joker named Martin Luther.”
I suspect that is often true. I remember that in college one classmate told me how infuriating it was for me to sit next to him in biology classes, taking notes very selectively while everyone else was writing furiously, and then I’d ace the tests. I actually did take some notes, but if I had tried to write everything down I wouldn’t have been able to listen to the lecture and think about what was being said.
A lot of the books I buy are used books. Many of them are library discards, and those tend not to have any writing. But I don’t mind buying books that have been marked up. For one thing, they’re usually cheaper that way. I haven’t come across anything memorable, but it’s sometimes interesting to get clues as to how other people were thinking.
In scholarly histories, I often end up with a book full of sticky notes, some with a word or two to remind me of why I thought the passage or endnote was important. 3M notes are best even though not the cheapest, because 3M tends to get adhesives right.
More recently I use the CamScanner app on my Android phone to make a copy of the passage. The feature for adding annotations isn’t as good as I’d like, though.
That would be annoying.
I have not marked up any books since law school. I do, however, write comments on my computer screen in the margins of Ricochet posts.
It turns out that this practice doesn’t really work out all that well.
You can fix that with a little white-out…
If I own the book, absolutely I write in it. I like to highlight special/important passages and jot down a note of what I’m thinking. I would say, that it is true, most intellegent people do write in their books.
If I don’t own the book, of course I don’t.
EDIT: Now that I’ve read people’s comments, please don’t take offense that I said most intelligent people write in their books. I thought most did. It comes from my English Literature degree side. How else do you find the important passages when you have to write term papers? Marginalia notes are indispensable.
Who would have thought this topic to be controversial?
This is Ricochet. It’s what we do.
Jotter vs non-jotter is the new SSM.
Oh, and dog-ears make me cringe. I am strictly a bookmark kind of girl.
When my husband or daughter folds a page as a book mark, I’ve been know to whimper and say it was the book crying. ;)
LOL!
By the way, I should add I only write in pencil. And I prefer a mechanical pencil.
Oh, see, now you’ve done it. It’s live-and-let-live with the book defilers (LOL), but mechanical pencils are the devil’s playthings. It Ticonderoga or bust!
Post-it notes? They work for me. Of course, writing term papers might be different than writing books, so maybe using post-it notes doesn’t work when writing term papers.
Seawriter
Absolutely! Annotation and underlining are among the great pleasures of reading an old-fashioned book (i.e., a book for which a real tree had to give its life.)
Most of my reading is non-fiction. Here is a list of what I am currently reading and the next few books that are pending, just to give you a taste of what a buzzkill I am:
Democracy and Political Ignorance, by Ilya Somin
George F. Kennan, an America Life, by John Gaddis
Coolidge, by Amity Shlaes
Taming Globalization, by John Yoo
What is my technique for defacing my books? I’m so glad you asked!
I only underline and notate in red ink with a fine point pen. The finer the pen the better.
I will not use a yellow marker to highlight.
I underline a name the first time I encounter them in a given chapter. This underlining typically flags the location where details explaining why I might care about this individual might be found because authors usually provides a bit of context when an individual is introduced. If nothing else, this flags when this player walked into the storyline.
I underline significant statements. Many paragraphs might build up to said statement. Many paragraphs expounding on the implications might follow. This underlined material is the main point the author is trying to make. It is often found in the first sentence of a paragraph.
Particularly interesting underlined material gets an arrow drawn in the margin.
Exceptionally profound underlined material gets the word “key” written in the margin.
And, of course, there are the occasional margin notes.
Also I use Post It Flags. I flag pages with material that I expect I will want to find quickly, say, when I’m trying to comment on Ricochet.
I must close by confessing one final book-crime: I dog-ear my pages.
So did Nero Wolfe – but only books he did not intend to keep.
Seawriter
English major and English teacher; of course I write in books. In fact, I teach impressionable teens how to write in books.
I see….
The only books I write in are ones I use for work where there’s updated information to be added before a new edition has been published.
I like my books to be pristine. I get annoyed if I get a new book from Amazon and the cover has any bends or tears in it. I don’t like buying used books unless they’re fairly unmarked/unbent.
When my son was in college, he insisted on buying used books, not so much for the economy of doing so, but because if he got a well-notated copy it might have insider info for a class.
The later.
The ideal is probably that you buy a nice version for your bookshelf and a $2 Dover copy to mark up.
One more follow up : what percentage of your books have coffee cup rings on the cover?
That would be telling.
Seawriter
Whose side are you on, anyway?
Mine. Whose else?
Seawriter
None. (I don’t drink coffee, and I certainly would not use a book as a coaster.)
That’s OK. Nobody’s perfect.
We have a merit badge for that.
I really, really want to write in my books, but alas, I’ve never gotten over the psychological barrier. But it’s no longer necessary. To improve on Kindle’s meager clumsy note-entry, I keep files on my books in Evernote. When I finish a book, I capture my highlights along with my notes into Evernote, so I always have them at my fingertips.
I started marking up my books after I read Mortimer Adler’s “How to Read a Book.” If the guy who assembled the “Great Books of the Western World” says it’s preferable to write in a book, who the heck am I disagree with him.
My only problem is, I can’t get rid of a book that I have notes in, but I love picking up old books and seeing what I underlined or asked in the margins.