[shannifin]

> Mark up the book

Good for a book's first reader. What I really hate is browsing a used bookstore and finding something interesting or ordering a used book online, only to find it covered in markings (especially as some readers seem to highlight the most banal things). Very distracting.

I usually can't bring myself to mark up my own books for fear that I will distract my future self (or some other future reader if I sell or donate it), but will take notes separately. Although I've found that most books usually have hardly anything at all worth noting, and I'm not sure taking notes for its own sake, without any idea of its future usefulness, is necessarily worth it. Perhaps the hope is that a bunch of random knowledge just sitting in your memory will somehow automatically make itself useful when the time comes, which to be fair happens now and then, but usually if its not useful for very long, into the land of the forgotten it goes.

[RheingoldRiver]

I used to feel this way too! But I've rethought it completely. The way I reframed is: If you spend money on a class, you can't then donate/sell that class to a used bookstore; I'm just turning the book into a class by writing in the margins. So, if I can increase my retention by 10% by writing in a book, I'm gonna write in the book. In reality I'm probably increasing my retention by something like 100% to 300%.

Thinking in these terms, I went from being just horrified at the idea of writing in books (I'm the kid of two college professors lol) to a huge advocate of it. There are some books I won't write in; the less related it is to my job & the more I'm just reading it for fun, or the more surface-level the content is, the less likely I am to write in it. (Also some UX books have really glossy pages and I literally can't.) (The one line I draw is, I will only write in pencil, never pen.) But most books I write tons and tons and tons of comments in the margins, and it really, really, really helps boost retention.

Also, writing in the margins is like actively participating in dialogue with the author and makes the experience a lot more engaging! Which makes me able to stay focused for a lot longer. Like if I'm not writing anything I'll start to get distracted / zone out after maybe 10 minutes, but if I'm interacting, I can stay focused for an hour or more. (Depends on the book and what's on my mind at the time and other environmental factors of course.)

[newbamboo]

I like to see others’ notes and highlighting, as long as it’s not too much. If the notes are banal or stupid it just makes me feel better about myself. If they are too smart for me or make connections I cannot, all the better.

My preference, rather than write in the book, is to write notes on little notepads and leave the note in the book as bookmarks. Probably not good for the books themselves if I add too many but it is convenient and I don’t have to worry about someone downstream finding my marginalia banal.