Haha. I physically can't write in books, drives me nuts. I've taken zeroes on annotation projects before. If I have enough thoughts about a book I write up a little companion piece and stick it somewhere.
I just read a passionate and convincing argument here for why one should write in books, especially library books. Back in the way back, books were considered valuable and precious. They were written by experts - who are we to contribute our scribbles, underlining, or highlighting to their wisdom? Books could be valuable, could be resold -- but marks of any sort would lower their value. As children we were told sternly never to write in library books, so we might have then adopted your process of writing up thoughts elsewhere. Writing in books can be distracting and misleading. Even so -- I think I should highlight more, especially the phrases that jump out at me that I might want to find again. Writing in books is have a conversation with the author. I suspect the author would appreciate it. Sidenote: Much has been made of William Blake's library and books where he left marginalia (by "much" I mean among Blake scholars or biographers). Be kind to your biographers, flagamuffin, and leave them some scribbles in The Silmarillion
Don't worry, my copy of Sil specifically is loaded with post-it notes from a "class" I taught over it last year. As for the rest ... the removal of choice is always a bad thing, and when you write in a book you remove a future reader's choice to read a pristine book, or even to write their own thoughts in it. I can't agree with ya.
Ah, but future generations have the possibility of finding a pristine copy of the book elsewhere, but if you remove their choice of reading a book with your annotations, there is no hope. For the record, I also cannot bring myself to scribble in books, though I sometimes find it fascinating to encounter the marginalia of others.
"Scribble" is a word that diminishes my point. Could it be that you and flagamuffin might yet be hearing the voice of a librarian or grade 2 teacher or parent admonishing you? In any case, most marginalia is idiosyncratic and indecipherable to others. My main point is to do it for one's self. Flag's method of keeping post-its and written notes probably works just as well. Ideally, one would highlight an important passage and use a post-it to make it easy to find later. Edit There seem to be two kinds of people in the world: those that allow themselves to write in books and those that do not.
-- Attributed to Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, 1781, upon receiving the second (or third, or possibly both) volume(s) of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from the author. I recently purchased a pristine copy of Thinking Fast and Slow (just a couple of years behind everyone). I expect to find it stimulating, and will consider penciling some impressions into the white spaces."Scribble" is a word that diminishes...
That's true, and reminds me of a favorite quote:"Another damned thick book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon?"