All About Books discussion

I'm one of those people who has been brought up never to write in books. The only time I've ever done it was for The Great Gatsby, which we had to study last year for English Literature, and I basically wrote why I hated it so much. It was liberating, but I had to buy a whole new copy to take into the exam with me.

I'm finding it increasingly tempting to annotate my books as I go along. Maybe it's because I feel like I just gloss over everything, that I want to try get deeper into the books, especially the classics I'm reading. I guess I'm just concerned anything I write a) looks messy, and b) isn't deep enough to be worth written.

What are your views on annotating/marking? And do you do it? If there are any tips (it sounds silly asking for tips...) that anyone can offer on maximising their usage, that would be great!

Thank you!

Not often but every once in awhile a book comes along that just asks for it. :D
I wrote a ton of notes in Infinite Jest when I read it. It helped me flip back and find passages later in the book (it can get convoluted and I wanted to check some facts).
I'm also writing in The Divine Comedy. Heck, if I've got insight in this book, I want to write it down so that if I ever read it again, I'll see how smart (hahaha!!) I was the first time around. Besides, I forget insight or want to reference a passage and the notes make it easy to find. I also put little smiley or frowny faces beside passages I find funny or annoying/maddening/etc.
I thought about my notes not being "deep enough", too, but they are for me and if I get some fun out of reading them in a few years time, good on me.
I recommend a very fine tipped pen. It makes small writing much clearer to read and easier to write. I keep the pen on the side table where I do most of my reading.
There's no such thing as not deep enough. If you thought it, it's worth noting. Eventually you'll become your own editor before writing the note.

I find that I write a lot more notes and highlights with the Kindle than I ever did with printed books. Partially because it helps me find places I might want to reread or refer to. In printed books, I can have a vague memory of where a passage is and flip back to find it fairly easily (without notes or dogears), but not in the Kindle editions.

In printed books, I basically only make corrections (and even then, I do it in pencil!).

Hell yes, I'm doing this. I do it everytime I like a line or think about a special line in a printed book. I do it for every line I want to reread or refer to, I underline them with markers, pencils, highlighters, or write things on the site or put dogears on the corner.
I also do it so I can see which lines I once loved and think about these times, the feelings I had...so it's a little kind of nostalgic thing, too.
But oddly enough, I never write notes or do highlights on e-books.

I highlight the odd phrase in kindle books but mostly I write my thoughts on complicated text in a notebook or on the notebook ap on my phone if I've without a pen and paper

I normally underline the parts that I want to reread or that I found interesting. I have a little notebook that I'll write certain passages down in just so I can go and read it without having to search through the book again. I have done notes and highlights on my Kindle before, but not as frequently as with hard copies.

I never put a mark in a book. No highlighting or underlining. That's a major sin, and those of you who do these things should be voovaed until the cows come home.

Never write in a book! Like Holly I was brought up this way!
But now I have my Sony ereader I find myself writing notes while reading. Before, if I liked some particular passage I used to write it down in a booklet - if I had it around.

Aaron-{{Everlast}}-Rebel Leader wrote: "I never put a mark in a book. No highlighting or underlining. That's a major sin, and those of you who do these things should be voovaed until the cows come home."

I would not usually mark a book, but I have done in the past, as a student (in fact, students are encouraged to!) I don't think it's a sin, it's personal choice...

It's interesting how varied peoples views are on this. I might just underline passages that I really love! Then again, I'd have to do that in pencil because the thought of doing it in pen just hurts. There are pictures of books I've seen that are amazingly annotated, and I wish I could do something like that. I guess I just haven't got as many thought processes as those people!

Marking a book is blasphemy!

Hee hee such polarised views. When studying I used to mark books, as you say Shirley, it is encouraged. But if it was a favourite I'd have another "nice" version - it does seem "wrong" with beautiful books.

Probably my upbringing as you say Laura - I remember being sent to my room as a small child for colouring in line drawings in my own books. I just thought I was making them prettier!

Oh what does annoy me though is finding underlines in my Kindle books. Does anyone know how to get rid of these? I don't expect to buy a Kindle book only to find someone else's idea of what is important already highlighted! :(

I've never even considered annotating my ebooks. It's something I'll definitely look into!

I'm pretty sure you can access your general notes/underlinings in your Kindle and delete it. I believe it is in the main shelves page, but it depends what version you have!

My mom was the opposite when it came to coloring in books, haha. She encouraged me to underline what passages meant something to me so I could always go back and find them quickly if I needed to. She didn't necessarily encourage me to color all over the place, though. I also get a "nice" copy of books that I really like that are mark-free.

Aha, Aaron. Sorry, I don't exactly swing your way!

Lissa, your mum sounds like a really awesome mum! I can't even remember what my mum taught me about colouring in books. I can't remember even having many...

Ah Aaron - you just want me to use that "flummoxed" word again...

Holly oh **** don't you dare start marking ebooks toooo! I should definitely have thought of that before mentioning it shouldn't I? :D Thanks for the tip though.

And now I'm going offline to take my dog for a walk before I cause any more trouble!

@Holly

Oops...forgot.:)

@Jean

Oh Jean, use it again. Oh yes! In caps! LOL

Take a pooper scooper.

My rule with books:

I love underlining, making notes on the margins and on the end pages. But these are permitted as long as the book is mine.

I never do any of these thing when the book is a borrowed one.

At times, I make such jottings that reveal my personal side, I find it difficult to lend that book to my friend. I always buy and give the new copy to him/her.

I hate writing in books, even in school I would put those little sticky things to mark something and write in a notebook.

For anything in school and then university I used to write notes all over books, but only ever in pencil! They also end up with sticky notes everywhere. If I'm studying a book I need to write loads of notes in it otherwise I get confused and I can't be bothered to write it down on a separate piece of paper and look it up; I like knowing that I can look on a page and see from my notes exactly what's going on. But, like Dhanaraj said, I would only ever do that to my own books, I would never write in any one else's.

Jean wrote: "Hee hee such polarised views. When studying I used to mark books, as you say Shirley, it is encouraged. But if it was a favourite I'd have another "nice" version - it does seem "wrong" with beautif..."

In the menu, go to Settings, and turn off "Popular Highlights" and "Public Notes".

I was so well-trained to make/take notes "at an impressionable age" that I can't read without a pen on my hand . I keep the cap on the pen if it is a borrowed book. ;-)

Shirley wrote: "... but I have done in the past, as a student (in fact, students are encouraged to!) ..."

I think my feeling that I shouldn't write in books is because in primary and secondary schools (American public schools), our books are borrowed from the school and we are told NOT to mark them! Getting the books from the teachers and putting covers on them to protect the binding was a fall ritual.

I can remember the wonderful feeling when I was a freshman in college that the books were mine - to keep! So I think that I did a bit of underlining just for the novelty of it but it felt wrong (12 years training isn't easy to overcome!).

Thank you Leslie! That may stop me shouting as I read and scaring the pets! ;)

I think that's what is worrying me. Next year, when I get to Uni, I might be expected to annotate my books, and a lot of the time, I don't know what to write. Maybe it's just the way I read, but I find it really hard. Perhaps I need to start slow, underlining things, then move onto notes/annotations...

Holly wrote: "I think that's what is worrying me. Next year, when I get to Uni, I might be expected to annotate my books, and a lot of the time, I don't know what to write. Maybe it's just the way I read, but I ..."

I started underlying and taking notes on books in Uni, so don't you worry: you'll find out what you need in time. But there's a difference between "study boooks" and "read books", or at least I find it so

I underline with pencil and use the last page of the book to write down the page-number of where I underlined. Once I've finished reading I will copy them over to a notebook. I have a little tower of those by now filled with sentences or entire passages of books ;). For notes on the book I have yet a different notebook. It's a organizational nightmare, but I am extremely attached to my little ritual. I also highlight/write notes in ebooks. When I decided on which reader to get, the possibility to do so, along with an epub-ability was what I based my choice on.

I never write in books, it just ruins the book. If I like something in the book then I write it down in my notepad which is deticated only for qoutes from books I have read.

Jenny wrote: "I underline with pencil and use the last page of the book to write down the page-number of where I underlined. Once I've finished reading I will copy them over to a notebook. I have a little tower ..."

Really "germanly" organized Jenny! I'm supposed to do the same, and then I get lost!

I don't write in books not even library or books I've got autographed by the author. I save that for my notebooks or just save my thoughts for my reviews on here.

I'm in the - that would be sacrilege camp to write on books. I do sometimes fold the corner though, if I don't have a note book to hand.

I find the sacrilege thing really interesting, because I never thought of it that way. I love my books and take care of them (folding a corner instead of using a bookmark would give me heart palpitations for example ;)), I also never break the spine (is that what it's called in English?) of a paperback. For me however books are things I live with (literally, they are everywhere), that are really personal and that I re-visit quite often and look up the pages that I've marked. I also write into them where and when I have read them, so it feels a bit like a journal sometimes, especially when re-reading the sentences that resonated with me 5 years ago, which might not be the ones important to me now, but they say a lot about who it's reader was back then. To me writing in them doesn't 'ruin' them at all, it makes them more valuable for me.

Jenny wrote: "I find the sacrilege thing really interesting, because I never thought of it that way. I love my books and take care of them (folding a corner instead of using a bookmark would give me heart palpit..."
I am the same way with my books. I think it's interesting to open up a book I haven't read in several years and see what I marked and remember what kind of person I was back then. I also can't stand dog-eared pages, haha. The sight of them makes me cringe.

I never annotate. A few years ago I wrote the "point values" for some AR books (look up Accelerated Reader for info) on the inside covers, but that's it. I think it's because I give away all my books after reading them and any marks make them less appealing to whoever gets them.

Not in fiction books. If I am particularly in love with a quotation from a book, I will either copy it down on to a notepad file on my computer or write it out by hand.

In books I use for reference of some kind, then yes, I will sometimes highlight/underline/block off certain passages or things I may want to look up quickly in the future.

All I can say on this is : never. NEVER!