Discussion posts are some of my favourite posts to read. New ideas get shared that way, or old ideas are revisited and given a new spin. And of course, I get to be my opinionated self as I hoist my views upon others, while pretending to be objective. Or maybe not. I do welcome alternate views and I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
Last week there was this interesting opinion piece in the SundayReview of The New York Times, Scribbling in the Margins. The writer, Andrew D. Scrimgeour argued that readers writing in their books is the greatest tribute to authors. I thought that that’s an interesting stand because I’m in two pieces about writing inside books. As much it helps elevate engagement with a text at hand, I can’t help but think of it as defacing a book.
When it comes to my novels, I simply cannot bring myself to write in them or highlight a quote that catches my attention. I want to keep them in pristine condition, so that when I reread them in future, I’ll have new experiences when I read them. Of course, it’s not like reading them for the first time because I already know what happens but reading a clean copy allows me to form opinions rooted in that time in which I read a book, without worrying what I might have thought five years ago.
Then there are my academic books. If anyone of them is clean, it is because I didn’t even crack the spine. How I passed those modules still amazes me sometimes. Anyway, I always made it a point to buy new books, so I could write my own thoughts, highlight what I deemed important. I never liked second-hand books because reading someone else’s handwriting and notes annoyed me so, it was almost too much to bear. Instead of studying, I’d just glare at all those notes made by someone else instead of me. Generally, I always thought highlighting and writing in my books allowed me to better absorb the material.
Highlighted Text
Pencil Markings
Highlighting and Writing
Writing in my academic books though also added to my apprehension of writing in my novels. Textbooks, I learnt, are usually made of thicker paper, so they hold up when they come in contact with ink. Books not printed specifically for academic purposes usually aren’t printed on that kind of paper.
When ink seeps through the pages
Looking at one of my A Level books I used for Theatre Studies and Drama, it is very evident that that book was not printed on ink-friendly paper. That’s why my course mates and I always made photocopies of scripts that we needed to memorize for performances, so that we could mark them to our heart’s content. However, we were only allowed to bring original copies of books into the exam halls for the A Levels, so I had no choice but to make my markings in those books. Needless to say then, the only fiction books I ever wrote in were those I studied for Literature, and also for Theatre Studies and Drama. Other than those, I always made sure to keep my books clean of markings.
How do you feel about writing in books? Do you read with a pen in hand, or do you fiercely guard the purity of the pages of your books?
I apologise for my typos! I get carried away when commenting, haha :D
No worries at all! I get carried away too like that every now and then :)
I simply CANNOT write in my novels. Even though I may stumble across a quote that I want to stroke with love, I cannot do it. If, on the off chance that occurs, I’ll grab a notebook and write the quote out by hand, rather than highlight or underline etc. Like you said, I just cannot help but think that it’s defacing the book. I am a self professed book perfectionist. I hate it when there’s spine creases, or dog-ears, or anything. So I would never write in a novel.
When I see people talking (or writing) about using uni textbooks, I get kind of stumped. In my first year of uni, I bought the textbooks for every class. How many did I actually use? ONE. ONE. I literally wasted hundreds of dollars on this forsaken things, and I didn’t touch them. How many textbooks have I bought since semester one year one of uni? Zero. Zilch. Nada. I just don’t use them. And if ind it funny because the lecturer will always say: my lecture notes aren’t enough – you need to supplement my notes with the textbook! I kind of roll my eyes. Sif I am going to spend hundreds of dollars again when I KNOW I won’t even open the book?
With that first textbook that I actually used, I used pen and pencil to highlight things and make notes. That being said, I don’t think it really helped me all that much. I’ve never understood how to discern what parts of the text are important or not, so I pretty much just ended up underlining almost everything, haha!
And then I sold that textbook, and got half my money back from it. Which was a pretty sweet deal. I know I would never have been able to handle a textbook with someone else’s writing and underlining in it *shudders*
OH I just remembered that I used a highlighter once. The lecturer gave us photocopies of the relevant chapters from the course’s textbook (bless his soul), and I highlighted a bunch of stuff. But that was a condensed two week course, and the lecture material really WASN’T enough for the exam. So. Yeah. :P
I never really could either. Ever since I was young I had this need to keep my novels spot free. I remember when I was a kid and found a line drawn with a marker on the top edge. I was so mad about it, and cried when I found out my sister did it. She knew I’d be hurt and had done it out of revenge for something I don’t remember anymore. Kids stuff. Haha. So yes, I took any attack on my books very personally. It’s not so bad anymore, of course, but they still are very precious.
As for textbooks, I bought two-thirds of the assigned ones. After selling those I didn’t want anymore, I’m left with about a third of the books that were required reading throughout my university studies. Thankfully textbooks are very heavily subsidised in our campus bookstore. Whenever students came across books that cost more on campus than off campus, they had to report it to the professors or the administration. Still, I always took a look at the course outline to check how many chapters were required reading and how many were merely recommended. If less than a third of a textbook would be used in class, I didn’t buy it. Most of the professors I had only needed a chapter from multiple books, so we received photocopies thanks to fair usage for the purposes of education. Something about being allowed to photocopy up to 10% or one chapter per book, whichever amounts to less it. Those printouts I didn’t have any problems defacing at all. Heh.
Once in a while I did run into the same problem as you of having highlighted entire pages. Such a useless endeavour! But I learned to tease out the necessary information eventually, depending on who my professors were.
Wow…we’re so similar, haha. I don’t write in the novels that I own. That would just be upsetting. I remember one time I tried it, and I hated it so much that I ended up having to throw the book out because I was so disappointed in myself and couldn’t even bring myself to open the book. It was sad :P But my books and notes and printouts for school were always completely overrun with highlighting and writing in the margins. It was a really helpful way to study, and I would always try to by new, or very gently used, books because of that reason as well. Sometimes I’ll use those sticky note flags while I’m reading novels, in case there are any good quotes that I want to put in a review or things I want to remember to talk about, but I don’t do that TOO often.
It seems we really are similar when it comes to our books :D And oh dear. That doesn’t sound good. a cautionary tale for me if I ever find myself giving in to temptation to mark up one of my novels. Although, I do liberally highlight in ebooks. No ink seeping through the pages and the highlights always turn out nice and neat and straight. And yeah, I do resort to sticky notes once in a while but always take them out before shelving my books. I learned the hard way that some of those sticky notes really know how to stick. Also, leaving them in too long results in uneven colouring of the pages. Not pretty.
I write in my textbooks, but there is something about novels that I just can’t write in them.
Haha. Yeah. Somehow I also view textbooks and novels very differently. Can’t be helped *shrugs*
I waver between writing in my books and not. I read an anthology one summer for school and I highlighted, post-it noted, and wrote in it but I think it’s rather rare occurrence. for me. I don’t have the habit to write in books, because I use textbooks as review rather than to learn things (if that makes any sense?). I usually take notes in a notebook if I have to, a habit that probably stems from having my textbooks supplied to me by my school (elementary through high school). Now that I’m buying my textbooks, I usually buy second-hand textbooks to save money (new textbooks are around $100-200 per book) and I try to get the ones rated “very good/like new” which usually don’t have any writing in them. I, too, get bothered reading other people’s notes.
Overall though, I feel like I get a lot from annotating in the physical book. It helps alot when I’m reading books for literature class, but I, like Sana, can’t get the nagging feeling out of my head that I’m defacing a book.
Oh yes! I remember those years where I had books on loan from my school instead of having to buy new books. That was when writing in our books was strictly forbidden.
Do you resell your textbooks? I did that for some of mine. Cleaner copies were always preferable for me then because that way I could recover at least 60% of the original cost.
I used to go back and forth about writing in the margins of my textbooks. In O’ Levels I was adamantly against this but then I had to write in the margins at times for one reason or another. I slowly started finding it helpful and now I always have a pencil in my hand to underline or just note something. Sometimes, I use a highlighter.
But this is only for textbooks because I these little notes are forever. Like you said, I still remember everything about the topic when I skim through those notes in the margins.
In all, on one level I think it’s important and a good habit but I also can’t seem to shake off that it is also a habit that results in defaced textbook.
I definitely agree with you about not being able to shake the feeling that I defaced a book. The only way I could handily this was to make a distinction between academic and non-academic books.
This reminds me of this prof I had before who advocated the practice of writing in the margins so much that the first week of her module was spent on how to read instead of her actual course content. She made us read a few chapters from the book where ways to maximise this method of writing while reading were outlined. Very useful and yet so stressful for those of us who like clean books.