Thank you all for letting us browse your bookshelves. I'm sorry I can't oblige until I figure out how to do it. In my tiny office here I have three overstuffed IKEA Billy bookshelves, wallsfull in other rooms. Boxes and boxes in a basement elsewhere. Each book contains a time and place from sometime in my life -- even if I did not read it - and yes, there are many unread books. Sometimes I'd write inside the cover the date and city where I found the book. Sometimes I'd read with a highlighter. For example, I went looking for some Plato in my shelves this morning to see if I could unite with the rest of you. Instead, I found two Aristotle books and a copy of Jean-Paul Sarte's The Age of Reason. Many years ago, I highlighted this passage: Do you highlight? Open a book from your shelf and quote me a passage. demure Owl flagamuffin AshShields elizabeth thenewgreen dead5 insomniasexx bfv humanodon sounds_sound and most of all wasoxygenWhen Mathieu had pledged himself to Marcelle, he had forever renounced all thoughts of solitude, those cool thoughts, a little shadowy and timorous, that used to dart into his mind with the furtive vivacity of fish. He could not love Marcelle save in complete lucidity: she was his lucidity embodied, his comrade, his witness, his counselor, and his critic.
Was I between relationships when I highlighted that? I don't know. Was I longing for lucidity, for someone to embody it? Was I longing to be that for someone? Or was I missing solitude?
I sometimes highlight, or more likely underline and annotate, but most often I mark pages with dogears or scraps of paper with the initial line of the passage I'm marking just below the edge of the scrap. Sometimes the scraps have things written on them. Most of the time, I don't remember what my little notes were directly in relation to. Anyway, the book I pulled from my shelf was The Acid House by Irvine Welsh. The passage was marked with the following scrap of paper: I don't know whose handwriting is, but I very vaguely remember reading The Night of the Hunter. Maybe an old roommate made the recommendation? Anyway, the passage was the final two paragraphs of this short story: and marked like this: For me, this is interesting because I don't remember this story, but I do remember loving The Acid House and I know I've read through it several times. It also fits in with my fascination of human interactions and they play between the written word, perception and reality, so I wonder if this story has in fact been working on my subconscious for years and years while my consciousness has forgotten about it amid all the other stuff I chuck into my head. Good question.
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?"