[postalcoder]

A corollary to this is, when reading books, mark them up! Don’t be precious with them. Destroy the spine so it’s easier to read, fold pages, write the important stuff inside the front cover of the book. Cross out stuff you disagree with, draw a big circles around the stuff that resonates.

Not only does it make consumption a lot more engaging, it makes a revisit of that book extremely rewarding.

Don’t get caught up trying to figure out the right notation or highlighter color for a line. Just mark them up and later it’ll make sense.

Edit: I think the broader point that some of you may be missing is that I’m not prescribing a particular form of notetaking. I’m saying that reading is made more rewarding with active engagement. How you best engage is up to you.

[Diogenesian]

I buy used books: it sucks to see someone else's notes scribbled all over the page. It's like a really annoying guy whispering at you with vapid explanations while you're trying to pay attention to a lecture.

"Cross out stuff you disagree with" actually makes me sick.

It also seems useless for understanding and retention, since highlighting is almost always misleading and margin notes are almost always empty. If you want to write notes, get a notebook, which gives you space to write real thoughts down. I use a trapper-keeper.

[joeriddles]

I disagree. I love buying used books and seeing what other people found interesting, whether it's by way of notes in the margins, highlights, etc. I also love it when people write their name in the front of the book and when they read it. I like the idea of a single copy of a book making its way among many people, all adding their own thoughts.

[mangodrunk]

Same reason I miss those library cards found in the back of books. I enjoyed seeing the history a book had, how years could pass without anyone checking it out or seeing a flurry of checkouts.

[momoschili]

wow I hadn't thought of those in a while and I also used to love seeing that history and thinking about where the book had been. Thanks!!

[wingworks]

Me too! Those library card were more interesting than the book sometimes.

[johongo]

If only people did this with care. I have seen too many books where people just highlight everything.

[usef-]

The same is true in every realm: taste matters. But that's not a reason to blanket-discourage expression.

(I do wonder if the people here who hate it are picturing students who blindly highlight pages, and the people who like it are remembering the times they've seen a few pencilled sentences in margins of an old book)

[fsckboy]

>But that's not a reason to blanket-discourage expression

nor was there a reason to blanket discourage treating books as precious and worth preserving. i'm interested in the part where you note what you noted and let the other glaring transgression pass. That was a choice.

[InvertedRhodium]

Knowledge is precious and worth preserving, sure, but a specific copy of a book? Unless they're doodling in the margins of historical documents or rare manuscripts, I personally can't see any reason why it should matter.

[Wistar]

I once picked up an old copy of Bartlett’s Quotations and found that the prior highlighting owner found it nearly 100% profound.

[imp0cat]

Yeah, I am always reminded of the "property of the Half-Blood Prince".

[anvuong]

There is nothing wrong with scribbling in your own books.

There is also nothing wrong with donating such books with clearly written disclaimer on the front page about the condition of the book.

Repackaging as 99% likenew and selling them should be a crime though.

[john_strinlai]

it was funny seeing this right below the comment saying "I _love_ buying a used book and finding a previous reader's notes in the margins. It's the greatest.".

different strokes. if you want to ensure you don't get sick from a line being crossed out, buy new.

[RRWagner]

I have a book (not authored by Edison) that Thomas Edison scribbled his comments in the margin and I was quite happy to read them! Changing my own nearly-religious belief to never write in a book,I found that it totally changed my experience with the book and the author. There are thousands of copies of any particular modern book and it's no longer my task to preserve that unique copy for after the apocalypse. I would like to imagine my children one day being able to see their father's thoughts and dialogue with authors.

[nahkoots]

That's incredibly cool actually, what was the book? Could you share anything he wrote which you found especially interesting?

[RRWagner]

The book is "Making Good in Business" by Roger W. Babson. Babson gifted the book to Edison in 1921. Here is a link to a scan of another copy of the book in the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/bwb_P9-DAU-349/mode/2up

Here is my github repo with scans of the marginalia from Edison: https://github.com/RRWagner/Making-Good-in-Business-Babson-E...

[Chilko]

These were interesting:

"History proves that religion is a curse and is the master scheme for Exploitation of man" - p47

"God helps nobody. 20 million perished in the late war — for no fault of theirs Why did God permit this" - p48

[throwaway554514]

Got excited to check it out. fyi the same image (inscription) somehow got uploaded for all the images.

[Diogenesian]

This is so condescending. The reason I buy used is that the overwhelming majority of books are out of print and not available digitally. Which makes the vandalism especially egregious!

[Dylan16807]

It's not vandalism. Calling it that is condescending.

You can buy unmarked used books. Just check. (And if you're buying online the state of the book is expected to be in the description.)

[john_strinlai]

vandalism is destruction of someone else's property. that's not what is happening when someone chooses to write in a book that they own.

[Diogenesian]

You noted elsewhere I said "vandalize that wisdom." Perhaps you should think a little more about why I am using the word "vandalize" provocatively and figuratively.

[john_strinlai]

yes, you are using it to emotionally bolster your argument, despite it being an incorrect characterization. it reveals that your argument is not very strong.

[jibal]

Learn what words mean. That comment is not remotely condescending, and scribbling in one's own book (with no indication here that the owner intends to sell it) is not vandalism.

Oh, I recognize your name ... wrong about so many things.

From another one of your comments here:

> No, my argument is that it's totally obnoxious to lend or resell a book that you've written in

But the person who advocated for writing in one's books if desired said nothing about lending or reselling them ... YOU were the first person here, in your response to them, to whine about BUYING such books. Talk about obnoxious!

[Diogenesian]

Responding to you again to tell you to stop making personal attacks. I flagged your other comment. Stuff like this is why people leave HN.

It seems like me insisting that LLMs are stochastic parrots [presumably that's what you're mad about] is beginning to draw personal attacks on totally unrelated threads. Happens a lot. I used to have an account here with my name on it. HN is simply not a safe place to disagree with prevailing tech ideology.

[jibal]

The guy who dishonestly said "This is so condescending" and is making swipes at whole classes of people, accusing them of being obnoxious, is complaining about personal attacks. Someone who has been here less than a month and in that time has rubbed many people the wrong way is talking about why people leave HN. He flags a comment referring to some narcissistic rando resenting people for what they have done with their own property as a personal attack -- who did I attack with such generic phrasing?

And his "presumption" is erroneous, absurd, and misrepresents previous commentary.

Whatever. My HN front end has a mute function and I use it for people acting in bad faith. Ta ta.

[ekelsen]

It was extremely common back in the 1500/1600s, when books were far more rare and valuable to write in them. Almost every copy of these truly old books has something written in them, often by multiple people as the owners changed. That's part of the history of the book.

[8note]

they also would get all the words scraped off and get a new book written on the pages, often some religious text.

and so now, some ancient math tehcniques can be unearthed by finding all the layers of writing in a book

[godwinson__4-8]

If the notes are good it can be a gem. If not, then it also really bothers me.

Another way of saying it is discussing a book with some people will be really rewarding. But others you will rather prefer not to. This is just an instance of a more generalizable rule: people develop preferences regarding who they want to spend their time with.

[jambalaya8]

FWIW, I switched over to the post-it note method (mostly) in the 90s for real live books. Grab a few colors and shapes. Easy to remove if you don't want to share your thoughts with someone else if the book is something you later choose to get rid of.

[jskherman]

Well not everyone has the privilege to buy new books, especially course-mandated books that the professor "coincidentally" wrote and costs hundreds of dollars.

I would even say that "crossing out lines you disagree with" is vandalism because a book can always be read by others and come to a different conclusion and debate in their mind from there.

Why treat books as disposable mind scaffolds when they can be used again by others productively and even preserved for later generations? If you found a book to be at least somewhat useful to write notes on, then why would others not also find it useful?

Margin notes are fine though as long as they do not make the main contents of the book unreadable like "crossing out lines".

[usef-]

This is why "condition" exists for secondhand books. People can choose a written-in one or not. If you can't afford new, note that written-in ones are often even cheaper!

I have been delighted by the writing I've seen in books, especially if it's a copy of a friend or family member, as you feel you are connecting to another reader years later, and the item is no longer identically mass-produced. But maybe it depends on the taste of the person writing in the book.

[john_strinlai]

>I would even say that "crossing out lines you disagree with" is vandalism

if you cross out words in a book you borrowed, that is vandalism. if you cross out words in a book you own, by definition, that is not vandalism.

it would be uncool to mark up a textbook you planned to resell at the end of the semester, but it still would not be vandalism assuming you bought the textbook.

[shash]

Again, depends… I have appreciated my seniors’ notes in some textbooks - especially where the book itself isn’t clear.

[spunker540]

I think the truth is most printed copies of books are rarely read even once, so the idea of preserving them is noble but realistically not that important. And may be outweighed by benefits accrued to the person currently owning and reading it making the most of it and marking to their hearts content.

I admit I don’t mark up my books but I feel tempted to try

[AllegedAlec]

> Well not everyone has the privilege to buy new books, especially course-mandated books that the professor "coincidentally" wrote and costs hundreds of dollars.

Do you even understand what you sound like? "Writing in something you own is vandalism because poor people".

[stiglitz]

I’ll never forget seeing a girl in a cafe highlight, line by line, nearly an entire page of a textbook. Watching the page curl from the wetness, almost as if writhing in pain.

[mapkkk]

I'll (lightheartedly) come to their defense to say that this is how I and a lot of my peers made it through med school. The wetness of the page indeed unlocked some supressed memories.

I think it's a combination of a ritual and some sort of somewhat-more-elevated engagement (or wishing thereof) with the material. Somewhere between meditative ritual and attention aid. I doubt it helped much, if at all - except for Stabilo; they were the true winners.

[gtg239a]

I remember as an undergrad watching some philosophy majors do this with their reading and their explanation was that it helps them track reading progress. And to your point, that tactile act probably helps a lot with engagement!

The unfortunate part is that you can't then unhighlight a passage.

[killerstorm]

Yeah... There was no "reading" in our ancestral environment, it's rather unnatural for a human brain to focus on the page where nothing happens. Some people can adapt to that, other people need stimulation of some kind.

And it's not like some ADHD thing which is new. E.g. Stanisław Lem as a kid: "But because the act of reading was too passive, too simple, I would rest a chair leg on my calf or knee or foot and with little movements keep the chair at the very brink of falling."

[pryelluw]

Your argument is that in order for you to have a better experience the previous owner should not “ruin” the book for you. I’ve read better arguments on bathroom stalls.

[Diogenesian]

No, my argument is that it's totally obnoxious to lend or resell a book that you've written in, and it's a shallow way of taking notes to begin with. It is precisely what Socrates warned us about.

[jjice]

I'd say this is a problem with the seller's communication, not the use of the book. If the seller didn't specify that the book was marked up, I agree with your sentiment. The act of writing in a book and selling it isn't the issue, but setting false expectations to whoever you're selling it to is.

> and it's a shallow way of taking notes to begin with

Are we really going to speak down to how someone uses a bunch of paper bound together? That's how they wanted to use it, which is cool, it's just not how you like it.

[Diogenesian]

My intention is less "talk down" and more "Socrates was right." Too much of note-taking is a ritualistic behavior that actually hinders understanding and retention. I think highlighting / circling / crossing out / etc is by far the worst, but margin notes are also bad.

It is very frustrating the number of people who say "it's their property, they can do whatever they want" and similar comments, all of which are missing the point. Yes. It is legal to write on your own property. I know thay. It's my opinion that they're doing something that is guaranteed to harm overall human knowledge: whoever purchases/inherits/digitzes the book has to deal with it. And it almost certainly harms their own understanding of the book.

[chimpanzee]

I printed this out just so I could cross out every line except for one. And now, with renewed mental confusion, I wrestle with my sins against humanity.

[jvergeldedios]

We don't even know if Socrates not writing his teachings was a principled stance to begin with, so "Socrates was right" is a shaky place to start your argument. Also "Socrates said writing is bad, so don't write in this piece of writing that you didn't force me to buy" is one of the weirdest pieces of circular logic I've ever come across.

Even if we take for granted that it was principled, it almost certainly wasn't pointed at marginalia. The argument (that Plato put in his mouth, through written text, no less) is that writing that substitutes for internal recollection can't answer back. It's an argument against outsourcing a thought to fixed text. A margin note is the opposite: it's the reader talking back to the text.

You have a personal preference about buying unmarked books, and you retreat to a Grand Unifying Socratic Theory whenever someone challenges it.

> it almost certainly harms their own understanding of the book

What? For all people who ever mark up a book in the margins or highlight passages? How could you possibly know that?

> they're doing something that is guaranteed to harm overall human knowledge

Also what? Human knowledge is necessarily a collaborative effort. Reading a text with another person's notes alongside it is just another way to engage with it. I'll maybe grant you highlighting since it's been shown to not help with retention all that much.

We have a deeper understanding of some of the most famous thinkers in history because we have books that they marked up to help us understand how they engaged with specific texts. This is invaluable for "overall human knowledge."

Herman Melville marked up his copies of Shakespeare's works and that shaped how scholars read Moby-Dick. Did he "harm overall human knowledge" by doing that?

[calf]

Ok then please explain why Socrates is better than margin notes for an assumed purpose, because that is not reasonable common knowledge.

If by that you meant to suggest that for formal study, some kind of self-review process combined with cold written practice/rehearsal sustained under interleaved spacing, then that is likely the gold standard for comprehension and memorization. But most people don't even know that, either.

But the main premise is we should not assume all book reading is for rigorous self study. Margin notes can be useful for other purposes than direct understanding/retention (I admittedly don't know the psychology evidence for it but many academics routinely write margin notes here and there on (poorly written/edited) papers for purposes of idea generation, scientific criticism, etc. Presumably the Edison example mentioned above would have been more like that.).

[rc5150]

How dare you gatekeep how people interact with literary material? Who(M)ever purchases/inherits/ditigizes/burns a book has to deal with it, and that dealing with could include ignoring it like a grown up, using some whiteout, or if digitizing, using any of the myriad photo editing software available. Sure, maybe don't put your grocery list on a first edition of some rare Chaucer book, but Chicken Soup for the Teenager's Soul? Study guides? Infinte Jest?

A book with notes is a guarantee that the book didn't spend its life sitting on a bookshelf not being read. If people are reading it is a net positive for overall human knowledge.

Lastly, your usage of Socratic teachings is a hollow appeal to authority. Socrates is dead and a modest library in an elementary school would surely have brought him to tears had he known how far we've come as a species, much less the remainder of books currently available.

[8note]

if youre buying a used book, why not open it and see for yourself before buying it?

[bacheaul]

Probably the most treasured item I own is a novel a good friend of mine gave me as a gift. It was one of their favourite books, and they'd highlight lines and sections that resonated with them by putting brackets around them using a pen. Coming across those sections, and learning a bit more about them in the process, is like finding little nuggets of gold.

But I get where you're coming from as well. I guess it just really depends on the context of who/what/why when it comes to reading.

[dfee]

it's totally obnoxious to buy a copy of a book with notes in it and complain about those notes. 2¢

[marssaxman]

how are you supposed to know the book has been scribbled on if you buy it online, as you must do for the great majority of used books you might want to acquire?

[john_strinlai]

read the description of the ad when buying.

if it doesn't clarify in the description, ask or don't buy.

[sodapopcan]

GP makes no mention of re-selling. They explicitly talk about revisiting. Your comment would have done better as a standalone as opposed to a response to them.

And not that it matters, but "cross out" doesn't imply "destroy beyond recognition." A simple strike-through is sufficient to keep the text legible (so you remember what it is you disagree with).

[iterance]

This is why used books are graded. Marks lower the grade of the book. Buy a higher grade of used book.

[emptybits]

Aside from shallow, uncritical notes, consider that annotating in a margin is evidence that a reader is actively engaging with a text.

Very often when I write in margins it's to question or argue against what's written (e.g. "really? what about ...", or "no, contradicts ...") which, to me, seems in line with the dialectic process Socrates promoted. Multiple sides, truth-seeking.

Sure, having a spacious notebook on the side is even better. But it's the same goal, isn't it? Engage more deeply with a text and encourage questioning as you read it, while it's still fresh.

[jambalaya8]

Sometimes you have the drastic misfortune of someone totally off the rails writing crazy crap in it though, or a 3 year old experimenting with crayons. Not what the Stephenson article is about, but that sucks.

Amazon's used prices are usually set by booksellers that base their prices on stuff like this for some books... When you get to like old cheap paperback romances though, or that .01 plus shipping, you might or might not.

I would be pissed if I expected a clean, un-scribbled-on book I wanted and it was represented as such, but got that.

[emptybits]

Buying a used book sight unseen from Amazon or from a reseller who doesn’t have a reputation for reporting used condition reliably … that’s a buyer’s choice. It’s not left to (mis)fortune.

Anyways, my point was to counter the parent post’s claim that notes in margins are shallow or unsocratic. Some are, some aren’t IME.

[jMyles]

> bathroom stalls

That's like, elite literary territory though. Let's stick to the discussion on books.

[somenameforme]

The first time I read "this sentence is false" it was scrawled in a bathroom stall in the philosophy department. Seemed appropriate. Left me wondering how many other people had also sat there pondering it for a few moments, certainly more than that had called that number for a good time.

[jambalaya8]

Perhaps "this sentence is false" was actually the precursor to "Jeopardy", though.

[sellmesoap]

Some come here to sit and think, but I come here to...

[jambalaya8]

(if you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie, wipe the seatie)

[thegrim33]

As an analogy, imagine buying a movie you've always wanted to see, and when you start watching it you find the previous owner added a voice over on top of the audio containing their off the cuff thoughts about the movie.

[jacobolus]

The owner of a book doesn't owe anything to a random future person who picks it up from their estate sale or whatever. Vanishingly few books are irreplaceable enough to need to be treated as special relics to carefully preserve for posterity, and those that are tend to be already in a museum, library, or the collection of someone fastidious.

> sucks to see someone else's notes

You don't have to buy books with notes in them.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

> Vanishingly few books are irreplaceable enough to need to be treated as special relics to carefully preserve for posterity

I wouldn't be so sure of that.

I always make an effort to buy books I really like (or expect to really like) in hardcover. This is because, around 20 years ago, I found some shelves full of books in a house belonging to some ancestors of mine. The books ranged from maybe 60 to 120 years old and had been unattended maybe for 40 or 50 years. At a first glance, all the books looked fine, but when picking them up, the paperback books literally crumbled in my hands and were unsalvageable. The hardcover ones were fine and I still have some with me now.

The thing is, lately hardcover runs of most books seem to be pitifully small. They print a few at the beginning and then they switch to paperback only. Often I want to buy a book that is only 5 or 10 years old, and almost no one has the hardcover. Those who do often demand extortionate prices. It's not uncommon to see regular hardcover editions of regular books with nothing special from 10 years ago, with retail price around €20, sell second hand for €100.

So if you consider that paperbacks aren't valid for preservation because they will crumble sooner than later, there will be many books with a rather small number of copies available.

[dust-jacket]

> You don't have to buy books with notes in them

Although tbf its kinda hard to check without reading the whole book, no? A bit like saying "you don't have to buy a jigsaw puzzle with a piece missing"

[fasterik]

Totally agreed. I find it distracting working through a book that's been marked up by someone else. In fact, I get the same feeling even if I marked it up myself, which is why I stopped writing in books. I would prefer to keep my thoughts and the author's thoughts separate. When I want to know what the author thinks, I'll go to the book; when I want to remember what I thought, I'll go to my notes.

[deaton]

You can totally mark up your books. No issue with that, if you like it. I don't personally, but I don't see why someone shouldn't do it. Now should you sell those books? Probably not.

[BurningFrog]

Obviously (I hope), once you've grafittied your book, you shouldn't sell it as unaltered!

That doesn't mean scribbling in your own book is wrong.

[spragl]

I agree, and the very low price of used books that have writing in them, suggests that this is how people feel in general.

I have begun to write a page (by hand) summarizing my thoughts after reading a book, and put it in the start of it. That was a tip I saw on HN some time ago.

[yurimo]

Or use sticky notes! My friend annotated her favorite book with notes for me and it was awesome.

[samspot]

This is like saying that because some (or many) people are bad at taking notes and highlighting, taking notes and highlighting is a bad idea. It's a skill like anything else. You get better at it the more you do it.

I don't know about you, but when I re-read a book 20 years later it's unlikely I'll have that trapper keeper handy. Re-reading something later and seeing my younger thoughts is magical.

[hyperadvanced]

Crossing out things you disagree with is the most insane part of this. You should highlight or comment those if you’re going to mark the book up at all.

[haritha-j]

Nah I got this used text book once and it had all sorts of ridiculous stuff written in the margins. Some of the authors instructions were crossed out and replaced with their own instructions. I was really annoyed at first but then I tried some of the instructions and they were actually better than the author. I'm doing really well in potions class now.

[W3zzy]

I would never sell my marked up books. They're too precious.

[chupchap]

Why do you buy used books? You sound like the person who would prefer new books.

[Diogenesian]

I answered this several times in the thread: almost every book is out of print, including some of my favorites. I would be much more stupid and boring if I only read new books. And of course indicates why scribbling in a book is so terrible: if it's Tolkein or Susan Rice or Chem 101 7th edition then sure, whatever. But a lot of the worst scribbling comes from graduate students who don't value the text they're bloodlessly working through.

[the_af]

Some books and some editions in particular can be hard to find new.

[ekelsen]

Then don't buy used books? They are _used_. If you want a new book, buy a new book?

[Diogenesian]

I read two books recently that are out of print. One of them (Georges Rey's Contemporary Philosophy of Mind) is $150 on Amazon, and out of stock. The other (Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, and Ends) isn't on Amazon at all. Used bookstores are the only viable option.

Books are treasures. The second book is an enormously valuable source of wisdom. I am glad nobody vandalized that wisdom with marginalia and highlighting.

[john_strinlai]

>vandalized

for someone so concerned about knowledge, you don't seem to be too worried about continually using this word incorrectly.

[sooheon]

If they're so valuable, maybe you could spare a thought of thanks that the previous owners passed them onto posterity, whatever the condition. If you don't like the condition, feel free to continue your search. Getting heated over their use of their own property isn't very philosophical of you.

[ekelsen]

You do realize that in the 1500/1600s when books were incredibly rare and valuable it was extremely common to write in the margins and that such writing is now usually treasured?

Also it seems like you can buy the George Rey one for $54 new here https://www.wiley.com/en-us/shop/general-philosophy/contempo...

unless you also don't believe in paperbacks.

And the other is on amazon _new_ here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0198244649?lv=shuf&channelId=500&p...

[dcchambers]

It's 100% okay for people to write in their own books, and it's okay for them to donate or sell them after the fact as long as they don't hide the fact they are written in.

No one is forcing you to buy used books with writing in them.

[nephihaha]

I used to go to a shop in a student area and pick up old Norton's Anthologies. Many of the notes were unintentionally funny. Some are occasionally insightful.

As I say elsewhere, it depends on the edition or book, and how common they are.

[bstsb]

different people work in different ways. just because you hate it doesn't mean it won't be helpful for others.

also if you're buying used books, expect them to be used!

[giantg2]

"expect them to be used!"

I would expect them to be in the condition they were graded as. I'll avoid poor or fair condition books that have lots of marking in them. Good books that have minimal marking should be fine to me.

[krzyk]

Writing on a book is a bad way to treat a book. I hate it.

[noisy_boy]

Or maybe just use a pencil to make notes. The buyer of the second hand book can still enjoy your opinions while being able to erase them at will.

[NickDouglas]

Suit yourself, my family ended up with two used copies of "The Hobbit" and we kept the one that some kid had marked up.

[Hugsbox]

Had to google "trapper-keeper". Never heard that one before, gave me a bit of a chuckle.

[jibal]

No one is forcing you to buy books that have been scribbled in.

If someone buys a book then they own it and can do what they want with it, without concern that maybe some day they will sell it and some narcissistic rando will resent them for what they have done with their own property.

[Diogenesian]

"narcissistic rando" half of these replies are making personal attacks. Knock it off.

[jjulius]

FWIW, I'm picking up a very aggressive tone from the majority of your responses here. I'm not at all justifying the personal attacks, but I would posit that the tone perhaps invites them to a degree.

If there's no aggression intended, that's great, but I'm struggling to not see it when I read them.

[xolve]

I would hate reading a censored book. But a second had book with side notes and highlights is a chief reason for me to buy second hand book. Call it a time traveling mail box.

[zuzululu]

then dont buy used books pay for the new books

[chungusamongus]

I mean, that sounds like a you problem. Buy a new book or check to make sure the used book is not marked up before buying it.

[lo_zamoyski]

You may dislike buying used books like that, but the purpose of the previous owner wasn't to satisfy your future desire for a pristine copy. The purpose was his own knowledge. If that's what works for him, so be it. It's his book.

So it's a little self-centered to make this about you. It's not.

[glaslong]

I _love_ buying a used book and finding a previous reader's notes in the margins. It's the greatest.

A tiny glimpse into a stranger's thinking as they processed the same pages I just did.

Thoughts they may never have shared anywhere else, that may not have made sense to anyone anywhere else. A secret code only for people who just read the last few pages. Shockingly intimate.

[anvuong]

I once borrowed a technical book from my school library, and the previous owner who donated that book in the 90s circled the phrase "proof is left to the readers" commonly found grad math book and wrote a big "W.T.F?". It made me laugh so much hha

[clucas]

You might appreciate this one :) https://allpoetry.com/Marginalia

[chrisweekly]

TANGENT One of my all-time favorite websites:

https://www.themarginalian.org/

Highest possible recommendation for its thoughtful, intelligent, entirely human, poetic writing about various interconnected topics. Maria Popova is a treasure.

[jambalaya8]

Nothing quite the same as making scientific conjectures in your marginalia or jotting down ideas in books and then having strangers find them and reinterpret them their own way.

These were fun to find in college bookstores every semester. Not a fan of "highlight it all" but the occasional enlightened soul with a scientific bent.

[thelaxiankey]

Maybe I'm cynical, but I always get excited, only to be really disappointed by the other person's thoughts :/ They never feel like they're contributing much.

[nofu7ur3]

I abhor highlighting, underlining or writing in books by some previous "reader" as well as by myself. Why? It adds emphasis or de-emphasis which impedes and usually eliminates the process of rediscovery and potentially seeing something in a different light. I prefer my reading to be dynamic and unbiased by other people as well as by myself, whether that's from a few minutes ago or a few years in the past. Commentary, which is often situational and ephemeral, should be separate from the original. When a book is marked up, your choice to ignore or seek commentary is taken away.

[uncivilized]

Skill issue. I write in all my books and routinely revisit them. There are times where I can answer questions I’ve written in the margins after another read. Likewise, I also erase things and write other things as I gain more insight.

[tharkun__]

Hard agree on highlighting. I never understood it. Well highlighting and also the post-it notes marking of pages. It's just too much. Never worked for me. I only did it when I was forced to by teachers!

But not for the reasons you're stating. It was just more like "unreadable". There would've been essentially a post-it note on every single page. Or I'd highlight like half the page.

It's a bit like bookmarks in browser for me. I started out trying it. Neatly categorizing things in a hierarchy. It just doesn't scale. And I see people like your parent, with elaborate systems of bookmarks and they navigate the hierarchy, failing to find what they need, often giving up on it in the moment, saying they'll "find it later". Dude, guess what we're in a call together right now discussing a topic, either you find it now or never!

On the other hand, I don't bookmark anything at all any longer. But I'd die if I lost my history ;)

As in, I somehow remember the terms to write to find what I need and the browser finds it in the location bar history (made up of actual browser history and bookmarks if I had any of course) but it also applies recency/number of times I used it (I never bothered to look at which of these they actually apply). But I just know all I need to type is `n` and hit enter and based on how often I come here, that's gonna get me to hackernews!

Similarly at work, I remember phrases, parts of ticket summaries or even just the current epic everyone's talking about and I type in the number/summary parts and find what I need.

I could probably spend hours "organizing my bookmarks" (i.e. post-it notes and annotations) but I don't. Never needed it, never made sense, never worked. But it does need to be digital. I'd die if I had to be a 50 years ago librarian!

---

On the actual article though: writing by hand definitely is awesome in general. Learning other languages in school we had to learn the vocabulary by writing translations of terms into books. Often I could tell you that "this is the third word on the second page" but not the actual translation :)

[Hendrikto]

> Hard agree on highlighting. I never understood it. […] It's just too much. Never worked for me. I only did it when I was forced to by teachers!

> There would've been essentially a post-it note on every single page. Or I'd highlight like half the page.

That just means you are not good at highlighting. Which is likely why your teachers wanted you to practice it.

If you highlight half the page, I totally understand why it never worked for you and you did not get it.

[tharkun__]

They didn't want me to highlight. They just wanted everyone to do highlighting and post-it-noting.

And it's not like there was some sort of actual objective or teaching. Who knows, maybe I would've "gotten it" :shrug:

[baruz]

Many of the things you mention, crossing out, circling, I do not think of as actively engaging with the material, which a quick skim of the underlying research pointed out in the TFA (or maybe an earlier 2017 paper of theirs) requires using the fine motor control of actually writing. Writing marginalia is good for the brain; if you disagree, write out why, if you agree, write your reaction. Highlighting, circling, crossing out are mere consumption and only useful for finding passages later, not engaging your brain.

[Itanu]

Wow, I'd just like to say I'd never heard of the word "marginalia" before, but I love it :)

[GeneralMaximus]

Oh boy do I have a website for you!

I love browsing https://www.themarginalian.org whenever I have a few hours to kill. It's a bit like TVTropes, but much more "literary" for lack of a better word.

The author has spent decades building a digital commonplace book of everything she's ever read, and hyperlinked everything together in a way that you can get lost in her notes for hours on end and never surface. It's one of my favorite websites on the internet, and the best example of the power of marginalia and hypertext.

[HumblyTossed]

No. Carry a notebook. Long after you’ve given the book away, you’ll always have your notes.

[yulker]

why not both? mark up the book while you're reading, reflect in your notebook on what you read

[pjmorris]

Exactly. Personally, I gravitate toward book and topic-specific notes and highlights in the book itself and use the notebook for bigger-picture things for which book references play some role. I do a lot of highlighting in ebooks and lately I've started using LogSeq. I'll pull quotes from books into LogSeq and then tag them with whatever #bigger-picture topic I deem relevant, mimicking what I do on paper.

[ndarray]

The notes only make sense with context. I'm not interested in copying three or so sentences for every small comment or even just a highlight.

[jeremyscanvic]

Do you have tips to start using notebooks instead of marking books? I personally like to underline stuff in my books, when I start a new novel it's often people, places and events. I'm not sure what would be the notebook equivalent of that. Writing down what I would underline? It seems tedious and you loose context and the sense of proximity between words.

[jarvist]

For my textbooks, I use little record cards. I write the book reference on the top line, then whatever notes or quotations etc. If it's a heavily referred to book, I sometimes use different colour cards to mean different things.

When I return the book to the library etc., I take all my record cards out and put them in a little perspex index box.

Sometimes I use the record cards to then start some more detailed notes in a notebook; sometimes the record cards refer to a page in my notebooks where I've attempted a derivation etc.

[dredmorbius]

Or index cards. Zettelkasten.

Whilst reading, they double as bookmarks.

[sodapopcan]

Who said anything about throwing the book away?

[benbreen]

Totally agreed. I've never understood why people are so opposed to marginal annotations - it's part of why the book format succeeded as a technology! (i.e you can't marginally annotate a clay tablet). Incidentally, I always loved how Tolkien's maps had these pointing hands to indicate significant bits, and only after reading a lot of old manuscripts and incunabula in grad school did I realize that he was copying the favorite annotation of medieval writers, the manicule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manicule

[rectang]

"Write by hand and mark up your books" is excellent advice... that I no longer follow.

Marking up books didn't come naturally to me, but I did it for a while. Paper books are just decaying bundles of plant fiber — and the ideas within them are likewise ephemeral. The illusion of permanence must be confronted and reckoned with.

But for the last 15-20 years, I have been taking notes in text files that are saved to version control, which I find suits me better.

* Notes are not space-constrained by the space of the page margins, nor by the initial form they take on the paper page.

* Notes can be revised at will without requiring complete duplication to maintain optimal appearance and organization. There is no reason to resist revising notes — the history is completely preserved in old versions, so nothing will ever be destroyed even if deleted. Even though those old versions will almost certainly never be revisited, knowing that they exist frees the mind.

* I can indulge my perfectionism and write math notes in LaTeX, music notes in Lilypond, diagrams using SVG... The act of typesetting is itself a form of active engagement the source material, although it does not have all the advantages of hand-copying and can be time-consuming.

* Digital notes take up no physical space, compatible with a minimalist lifestyle. They can expand infinitely without needing to be stored or carted around.

* Digital notes don't need to be defended against physical threats such as fire, flood, or vermin. However digital notes still require precautions to preserve them in the form of a backup regime, so this is something of a wash.

* Ultimately, I don't expect anyone but me to be interested in my notes, and I don't owe anyone my notes. When I'm gone, the notes will vanish into nothingness — and since they are not constrained by being part of a legacy for heirs to pick through, they can take whatever form suits me best during my life.

[cmdocidjcije]

I think the main point being conveyed is that writing by hand improves recollection. Whether it comes naturally or not, or whether it is a better system or not, of course is subjective. However there is truth in the notion.

When I draw something I can remember the shapes better than if I simply sit there and stare at it. Something with the hand-eye coordination triggers the brain into remembering.

Typing in contrast, one is not tracing the shapes of the letters (the thing to remember), but pushing buttons that are not physically related.

It’s the same thing as if you can touch and hold an object it becomes much more real than if you can see it in a picture or on a screen. Remembering is connected better to touch.

[rectang]

Yes, writing by hand is an experience that offers unique benefits. The physical act helps to consolidate and integrate knowledge — improving recollection is one benefit, although I'd emphasize improving intuition as more valuable.

The primary activity of note-taking is forming words and grappling with ideas, though — it's not like all benefits are lost when using a keyboard. To a certain extent other activities like typesetting achieve similar ends.

My brother writes novels longhand, and I've thought hard about this topic. Ultimately, certain personality quirks held me back and I never felt carefree when hand-writing notes. Version control liberated me.

[Zancarius]

One of the benefits I've found is that it forces me to be brief. I've almost always kept notes and journals in a text format that I store in VCS, but I've found that journaling by hand is a vastly superior experience. It isn't simply about writing. It's about thinking of ways to write what I want more tersely (I'm prone to being verbose), and it's helped me process things ex post facto in ways that writing out the way I used to do simply couldn't accomplish.

I've also started collecting fountain pens, so it's linked to a related hobby. It's difficult to express that it is the entire experience, from the ink, to the feel of the pen, to what words are being written onto paper, that feels the most rewarding. I've also rather deliberately avoided document inks after much contemplation. I figure that the majority of inks I have aren't waterproof; if the journals ever get wet, everything in them will be destroyed.

That's how I've grappled with the ephemeral nature of the physical. Rather than aiming for optimizing permanence, as best as can be done on tangible, material books, I've preferred to embrace its weaknesses with full acceptance of what can (and will) go wrong. I suspect this is also because I have very little intent to ever go back and read what I've written. That could change, of course.

[burgreblast]

> Paper books are just decaying bundles of plant fiber

Enjoy notes the way you want!

But when I re-read a book I’ve previously annotated, I get a rush of the time and place it happened, 20 years later. It’s crazy.

We are tactile beings who exist and connect in 3D space and brains remember ideas in locations.

I love files. But I think strong entities are trying to rip control away, with stupid consequences like making .txt obsolete.

Books have a good chance outlast a)mediums and b)formats. They have a good track record. Check back in 5000 years.

[superloika]

> Paper books are just decaying bundles of plant fiber — and the ideas within them are likewise ephemeral.

We still have 1000 year old codex in quite good conditions. A paper book will still be readable 500 and 1000 years into the future, if properly stored. A digital file will be effectively lost in decades, if not mere years.

[pbhjpbhj]

Most likely though is your kids, or a company paid for from your estate, will chuck it all in a skip (dumpster) and it will be dumped somewhere to rot, or be burnt to make electricity.

Millennia old codices are extremely rare, and they've survived either by dumb luck or because they were treasured.

Maybe OP is a famed thinker, whose disciples will carefully preserve their notes; or their house is in a cave that will be at sealed in a landslide; or they will die in a peat bog clutching their notes to their pallid breast as the life force seeps from their body, submerging them in preserving ooze...

[rectang]

The current generation cannot bear the accumulated weight of all past generations. Loss and compression are inevitable.

99% of an individual's life experiences are lost when they pass. 99.99% of what's left moves from distinct memory to amalgamated collective experience within a generation.

Even for those of us who are blessed with loving friends and family, nearly everything will fade away. The adolescent me harbored mild delusions that history might care about my notes. The mature me is no longer burdened by those expectations, and my notes are better for only having a single audience.

[rectang]

When I was a child, I imagined that books and the ideas within them lasted forever. The shock is not in how quickly the written word dissipates, it's that it dissipates at all.

[andrewlin247]

Imagine taking a pause from your book to type out notes and run git commit LMAO. But seriously though, studies have shown handwritten notes to be more effective/memorable than typed

[Waterluvian]

I love nothing more than going through my mom’s cookbooks and seeing all her notes. It connects me with her even though she’s gone.

[imp0cat]

Also, most cookbooks desperately need notes as everyone's kitchen equipment is different.

[jboss10]

Michael Stevens (of Vsause fame) copies long quotes into notebooks, and he claims the act of writing it helps him remember. And if it's not worth writing, it's not a good enough quote.

[baruz]

Those are called commonplace books.

[edude03]

> Cross out stuff you disagree with, draw a big circles around the stuff that resonates. > Not only does it make consumption a lot more engaging, it makes a revisit of that book extremely rewarding

This is actually the biggest reason I own a Remarkable 2/Kindle Scribe, let's me "destroy" the book while also not having to worry about losing my notes.

[BeetleB]

Honest question: How confident are you that you'll have access to those notes on your Remarkable/Kindle 20 years from now?

I love my Kobo. I highlight stuff with it. But for anything really important, I then go to my computer, go through each highlight, and make notes in my org file.

(I probably should automate it - I know tools exist to extract all that metadata from the Kobo).

[Zancarius]

So, this is kind of not directly related, but sort of is.

I teach an adult Bible study class, and I use Logos for all of my notes and highlights. Your question touches on one of my specific concerns, because they use a proprietary format for their datasets. The best solution I have is that I export the notes and format them in Markdown, and I distribute them to the class via one of my blogs. Obviously, I can't include verbatim copies or quotes from the sources I use, but it's better than leaving the notes inside a platform that could (potentially) disappear in 20 years.

I cite all sources used in the footnotes of every session, so at the very least, it should be possible (theoretically) to obtain the source material in printed form and find the exact page number (Logos stores page number metadata in the digital copies). It's probably not ideal, but it's the best thing I've come up with so far that doesn't require a lot of duplication of effort.

[SoMomentary]

I'm personally extremely confident. Those Remarkable tablets are very hackable. I pay for their sub, but I've also whipped up my own app for syncing content between my RM2 and my home server so that I can send news articles to it, mark them up as I see fit and archive them.

[cognisent]

It's possible to download a marked-up PDF as a PDF from a Remarkable -- I can't speak for the others.

[BeetleB]

That's a decent enough solution if they let you automate somehow (e.g. sync to PC once a week without me thinking about it). I could then build further automations to parse those PDFs.

[waterheater]

The Remarkable can spin up a web server if you connect it to your computer via USB. You can then access the files through a web browser by entering a dedicated IP address, which the Remarkable will give you. This features is disabled by default for obvious security reasons, but it's trivial to enable in the Remarkable's settings.

Point being: as this feature works perfectly fine in Airplane Mode, you don't need an internet connection to use your Remarkable.

[nbernard]

> This is actually the biggest reason I own a Remarkable 2/Kindle Scribe, let's me "destroy" the book while also not having to worry about losing my notes.

Well... I'm mostly back to paper after losing most of the notes I had taken on my own Remarkable 2.

[davisr]

I buy paperbacks, chop and scan them [1] then use a reMarkable tablet + RCU [2] to do the reading.

Digitizing paper books and writing on them with digital ink is 100% the best way to have marginalia. I've tried special dotcode pens, portable scanners...writing digitally with a stylus is the best. Yes, it destroys the paper book, but it more than makes up for it with the freedom, flexibility, and durability of the digital copy.

[1]: https://www.davisr.me/projects/books/ [2]: https://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/

[doug_durham]

I so don't have time to revisit books that I've already read. I'd probably be embarrassed by my earlier naiveté.

[ex-aws-dude]

Yeah I don’t understand highlighting/marking up books

Who actually has time to go back and look at that?

It’s like taking photos of fireworks

[dghlsakjg]

For many, the act of note taking, highlighting and marking up enhances the value of the reading. Revisiting is secondary.

This is eminently true for me. I rarely revisit notes, but if I take notes I have a much better recall and understanding than if I just consume the content.

[philote]

Yep, and if I did there's no way I'd understand my previous notes.

[pbhjpbhj]

Be proud of how you've developed.

[madcaptenor]

I need to remember that this is okay. I didn't do it because of concerns about resale value... but recently I sold books for the first time in a while and got so little money that I realize this is not worth worrying about.

[WalterBright]

I also gave up reselling books I'm done with. I donate them to the little free libraries, friends of the library, thrift shops, and even give them to used bookstores.

There used to be bins where you could toss them all in, but those have disappeared.

[jeremyscanvic]

I was once telling a friend about a book I had just finished. They were curious about it and asked me to borrow it. I politely accepted knowing very well they could never read my copy for it was embarrassingly covered in the messy marks I had enjoyed making during my read. Fortunately neither of us ever brought the subject again and I now think twice before messing up my books!

[all2]

I wouldn't consider those things embarrassing. You may even consider it an opportunity to discuss the book at a later date?

[creaturemachine]

Unless it's from the library. I've had to keep an eraser handy to undo some rando's bizarre markups.

[whateverboat]

I have a better way. Make a notebook and write stuff down there.

[noufalibrahim]

Mortimer Adler (of how to read a book fame) has notes on this https://socrates.acadiau.ca/courses/engl/rcunningham/2022-23...

MAny a times, the books I read don't have enough place to scribble so I keep a A5 half folded as a bookmark and write notes on that with page numbers. Once the book is over, I read through the points and try to reconstruct.

I use a mechanical pencil myself since I like the teeth and my handwriting is better when I use it. Also, ability to erase (not for cleanliness but more to avoid wastage of space) is useful.

[christoph]

Grandparent and parents always taught me books were sacred and shouldn’t be marked or damaged, not gonna side with either side as I do like finding small notes, etc. in 2nd books from time to time. I tackle it with a cheap little Canon Selphy photo printer I use for spitting out random hard copies of photos periodically from my phone. I always make sure to print an extra of any photo I really like. I then use these as my bookmarks in any book I read… I always have 20 to 30 odd non-fictions on the go at once in various states of reading.

This acts as a note keeper, bookmark and sort of time capsule for me. When I finish a book, i’ll always leave it in there. I don’t know why… but I just like the idea of random people (and my kids!) finding these random photos and notes in my books long after i’m gone! The photo in the book also links it to that period of my life.

I found a strange polaroid in a 2nd hand book when I was a little kid, then some years back I used a photo of my own as a bookmark, the memory bubbled back up, and here I am now. Wife and I kept saying we don’t print enough hard copies of photos, so this helps fix that a little bit as well - you could say I now print too many!

[noufalibrahim]

That physical books age and retain pieces of their history is one of my favourite things about them.

I found a used book that was given to someone when he graduated top of his class in the early 1900s. There was an inscription from the principal of his college, signed and with a seal from the college. I stood there gazing at it and couldn't help imagining how he finished reading it, left it here and there in his house and finally, after his time, in the attic of the ancestral home. It was later discovered by his daughter or granddaughter and then when they were cleaning up, sold to a second hand book seller rather than just destroyed.

Contrast that to a PDF which is just as crisp and clean as it was when it was created (and which could, become a format for which we don't have a reader anymore).

[DanielVZ]

My grandad had a big library of books, but in his obsession of preservation, he wrapped all of their covers in gift wrap paper. It kind of defeated the purpose of having so many books in a library. You weren't able to browse them easily. I should go dive into them to take some some.

[SoftTalker]

In middle school we had to make covers for all our textbooks on the first day of school (it was a school requirement, I guess to get a bit more lifespan out of the books). We used brown paper from old grocery bags.

Of course a lot of kids would then personalize their books with artwork and stickers. I guess it was that generation's equivalent of covering a laptop with stickers.

[threetonesun]

I did the same but had forgotten all about it until just now. I still put all the random stickers that accumulate throughout the year on my journal, it's a fun visual reminder of entirely random little things that happened during the year.

[The_Blade]

Marginalia is the best! I have a handwritten note about Ayn Rand in my 27 year old copy of Enchridion, a great reminder that she is like chicken pox, better catch her as early as possible. And several books such as I Claudius held together with duct tape. And soy sauce stains in Gargantua and Pantagruel from the place my grad school gf worked. Those count.

A bit of irony, going through old stuff I found a copy of Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning... was the Command Line on top of handwritten running logs from sr yr of college. In that book, there was a ticket stub from the time I was 86ed from an amusement park. (I did not eat enough after training that morning.) I was escorted on a golf cart back to our car where I finished Neal's now charmingly quaint essay with the plastic handle listening to Nirvana.

This was August 2001 and Mac OS X had barely come out. Maybe AI rhymes where Chinese free open-models clean up but someone proprietary figures it out. Which is sad as someone dominant in the ecosystem right now is the equivalent of Gary Kildall.

[jambalaya8]

Geez, if she is like chicken pox, what do we get that is like shingles later? :/

[RRWagner]

The current administration

[mark_l_watson]

+1 I have read most of Rand's works. She grew up in the Soviet Union and hated collectivism and carried it very much too far. Still I find value in her work, and if she were here today I would bet $100 that she would disapprove of the current administration.

[jambalaya8]

The Trump one, the NY or CA ones, or all three?

I liked some of Rand's insights, especially about quality, and encouraging the act of deliberately trying to learn, analyze, and reason for oneself.

It is weird how a lot of Rand's stuff encouraged a calming environment while at the same time her books were so packed full of interpersonal drama, though. Not sure at what point her writing became less a warning against something and more 'for' something. It didn't originally read as the selfish crazy stuff a lot of the more vociferous "profit only" types seem to think. I have no clue how they ever read her stuff that way.

I suspect I read both Rand and Pirsig differently than most people, though. Rand was less of a hardass than people think, Pirsig much more of a stickler for; more in common than maybe at first or second read.

[The_Blade]

it is fun to get a reminder not regretting being obsessed with Ayn at 18 alongside my duct-taped copy of Foucault's Pendulum (note: the actual pendulum is at Musée des Arts et Métiers which was by far my favorite such place after a couple multiday trips to Paris). i still feel The Fountainhead is pretty far from Atlas Shrugged

Since this morning I happened to grab Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by DeLeuze & Guattari and inside (17 years ago, with a Pilot v5) i wrote:

"I have a feeling this needs to be revisited after another 30 years of production, process and consumption"

well, that time is now and AI is the body without organs du jour

(i am a weirdo really enjoying this thread of conversation right now)

[imp0cat]

No worries, there is even a Radiohead song about that (the weirdo part). ;)

[nephihaha]

Depends on the edition. I lent a book years ago to someone that was destroyed by damp on a window sill. I've never been able to get another copy of it.

A less rare book in a mass market edition would be another thing.

[dw_arthur]

If I'm really studying a book I'll have an office supply store cut the spine out and make the book spiral bound. It's pretty cheap to do it too, like $10 or something.

[QuantumGood]

I use high-quality tape on the spine after flattening it for easy reading; still flattens well, but holds together longer.

[bsoles]

With mild (self-diagnosed) OCD, I can't even read a book with a single dog ear on it, let alone markings and writing.

This may not be you aim, but there is research out there indicating that highlighting text does not help with retention.

[eudamoniac]

If you want to write in your books go right ahead, but the claim that marginalia and annotations have any benefit is dubious at best. A separate notebook is required. Nothing worth saying can fit in a margin.

[dredmorbius]

I've come to using a pencil (usually mechanical) for this. I can write lightly (so that annotations don't dominate the printed text) and erase stray marks or correct erroneous ones. I've developed a notation convention which tends to make my intent clear without visually dominating the text. A light vertical line along sections I want to highlight, stars, question marks, or bangs, occasional comments of my own.

[THansenite]

I recently overcame this as I've been reading more of the unread books populating my shelves. I always wanted to keep my books in pristine condition and never wanted to mark them up. Now, I realize they are part of MY collection and marking them up with highlights, underlines, notes, etc., only make them more valued since they contain their intrinsic knowledge from the author as well as my own views. Even if I want to give them to friends to read, they'll see areas that jumped out to me and maybe appreciate some of the additional context or focus I noted as well.

[jambalaya8]

Aside from my college books, I rarely marked any physical books up. When I went to ebooks on tablets from hardcopy, briefly, I got into notes and whatnot with MoonReader for a couple years (like 2013-2015). Don't see any point in it now. Mostly just questions, and always about non-fiction.

What's annoying are people who want other people to find their notes in books (and even sell them for the ego aspect).

[why-el]

For sure. The literal first two pages of any book, essentially the back of the cover and the title page, always host a huge list of pages plus summary of something interesting i saw in the book. For instance, it will say something like:

* p85, interesting semaphore usage

or some such. This also condenses the books to important things so I can do a speed read to recall the most important parts.

[Exoristos]

You don't need to "destroy the spine" and severely shorten the book's life; you can and should break books in[0].

0. https://www.museumbookstore.com/blogs/blog/how-to-open-a-new...

[lanfeust6]

Know what's way easier? Writing in a companion notebook next your book, with as much space as you need.

[atmosx]

> A corollary to this is, when reading books, mark them up! Don’t be precious with them

I do all that, all the time these days... :-) I thoroughly enjoy it! Sometimes I feel like having discussions (disagreeing or agreeing) with the author and will write entire pro/cons examples and/or arguments.

[dSebastien]

Better yet, take actual notes abd give yourself space to think: https://www.dsebastien.net/2022-02-17-how-to-capture-book-no...

[bodge5000]

I don't mean this with any disrespect, but people love to find ways to overcomplicate things that work perfectly well. And maybe for some reason that overcomplicated version works better, but for many it's at best a waste of time, at worst an active distraction from the thing your trying to do.

[coffeeindex]

Agreed. The important thing is to find something that works perfectly for you. Oftentimes I think people find their own perfect system and conflate it with being the perfect system.

[dSebastien]

True :)

[postalcoder]

Eep, I guess it depends on what kind of learner you are. For me, the notes being in the book, and the book being somewhere on my shelf spatially encodes it into my mind.

Offloading things into a centralized store according to a system not only causes me anxiety but it doesn’t have the same spatial kick.

[cestith]

I used to take notes on loose sheets of paper, fold them, and stuff them into the book between pages. I guess there are lots of ways to build a system.

A few books I've taken enough notes to collect them in a folder. I put section tabs in the book and tabbed dividers into the folder with matching colors. I note the page numbers for each note. Then I shelve that folder to the right of the book it was noting.

[jimbokun]

Reminds me how the original Mac Finder took spatial memory very seriously. Wherever you moved something on the desktop or within a particular folder, it stayed there.

That’s definitely a design principle that’s been long since lost.

[dSebastien]

I agree with the spatial memory and the many possible and valid ways to approach reading and learning. But it's much harder to recall, connect and leverage ideas that way

[The_Blade]

not as much as I used to but I still take handwritten notes when reading something I deem worth doing so by some personal semi-rational algorithm. my favorite exercise ~15 years ago was reading People's History of the US and Kissinger's Diplomacy at the same time, and taking notes in the same notebook in parallel columns. Naturally I went into product

[woadwarrior01]

I do this, but with Post-it notes. Something to do with the deification of books in the culture I was brought up in, which makes writing on the margins of books a sin.

[SomeHacker44]

Yes! 100x this. I do this all the time with my print technical books.

[sriku]

I recently lent a book with some scribbled notes of mine to a friend and they were all like "oh we love scribbles in books". Another way to connect.

[stringfood]

I've found I don't like marking up books, because what was highly insightful and revelatory on the first read, seems obvious and boring on the second read

[giantg2]

I use a folded computer paper as a book mark and take notes on that with a page number for reference. It preserves the book and makes it easier to find what I want.

[dzonga]

for situations like this - I feel like e-readers are beneficial - the one's with a pen.

since u can always create copies of documents. u can make it up as many times as u want.

or the old school way - using a photocopy for the pages u want to markup / print 2-4 pages in a sheet of what you want to read. & throw away.

[thi2]

I started doing this in cookbooks, less of this, this needs longer time in the oven, etc.

The first time it felt like a crime.

[throw0101d]

> A corollary to this is, when reading books, mark them up!

Not library books though.

Every so often I get one with stuff underlined with pen or highlighter, and it's one of things that really makes me angry. (Lightly in pencil I'm okay with.)

[talentedcoin]

Advice from an inexperienced reader, please disregard (and don’t do this to library books!)

[liendolucas]

No. Books are not to be massacred that way, if you need take notes you can still write that down on a piece of paper and leave in the relevant page inside the book. If you need to write that much have a notebook and put your book notes there, no need to destroy a book.

[charcircuit]

The way people take care of their property says a lot about them. Destroying and defacing one's own property is not someone I would trust. I'd prefer to work with people who treat their possessions with proper respect.

[juliend2]

I would not be so quick to judge. Book are better consumed actively than passively. To me it hints on a desire to absorb what's being read. i.e. a thirst for knowledge that is weighed above material possession.

[charcircuit]

A lot of books being read and not done so for knowledge. And there are other ways to actively consume without mistreating the book itself.

[hahahaa]

Post it notes tho...

[ehnto]

I hear you, some books are precious on a personal level but most books are made to be used, worn, enjoyed, thrown in backpacks etc.

I can understand the used book experience gets ruined a bit, but to be frank I didn't buy the book for someone else, and they made tens of thousands of copies. I'm going to dogear the pages, write notes where I want and generally utilize the book.

I feel the same about most things to be fair, I love seeing the wear marks and signs of life and use on items. Nothing lasts forever, and it's nice when you can see the stories told by an object by it's scars.

[the_af]

> Cross out stuff you disagree with, draw a big circles around the stuff that resonates.

I hate it when people do this. Please don't. If you must, do it sparingly and for the love of all that's good please do not cross out words or sentences.

The only thing I can forgive is people who quote a particular paragraph they liked about the book in one of the first pages where there's enough blank space. It's a personal touch that doesn't taint the rest of the book.

Some mark that this belonged to someone, maybe from decades ago, can be charming; but please, do not ruin the book for me by scribbling all over it.

[euio757]

> please, do not ruin the book for me

It all boils down to this: if it's a personal book that I don't intend to share with anyone ever, then I'll scribble all I want¹.

If I think it could be read by others in the future or it's obviously meant to be read by others (library loan) then don't.

And instead take notes on the side, with page reference if you really want to refer back to a specific page at some point.

---

¹ There's always a risk that a nosy kid finds my scribbled advanced-potion-making book in the future, but what's the worst that could happen?

[the_af]

Fair enough.

I always assume someone will inherit my books, either when I die, or because I gave them away as gifts or exchanged them for other books at a used books shop.

This is my stance by default, but let's say there's a book I love which I never intend to part with, even then I would feel bad about crossing words out. After all, if I love the book, what's this "violent" disagreement/scribbling about?

[Jtsummers]

> But please, do not ruin the book for me by scribbling all over it.

How would someone writing in their copy of a book impact your ability to enjoy your own copy? Relax, it's their property and it's not criminal, so let them do what they want instead of trying to dictate rules.

[the_af]

Because I inherited the copy, maybe as a gift or bought at a used books shop? It's obvious from context I'm speaking of books that ended up with me, otherwise how would I even know they scribbled all over them?

[Jtsummers]

> Because I inherited the copy, maybe as a gift or bought at a used books shop?

If it's from a book shop, you can thumb through it and choose to not buy it. If it's inherited or a gift, then what's the harm? Just discard it if it's been "ruined" or shelve it if there's some sentimental reason to keep it, and get a clean copy to read.

> It's obvious from context I'm speaking of books that ended up with me,

I doubt any of my books will end up with you nor will the books of the vast majority of HN readers and commenters, so why should any of us care about your peculiarities and avoid doing something that works for us and that we want to do?

[the_af]

> If it's from a book shop, you can thumb through it and choose to not buy it. If it's inherited or a gift, then what's the harm? Just discard it if it's been "ruined" or shelve it if there's some sentimental reason to keep it, and get a clean copy to read.

Sometimes you can thumb through and discover flaws, sometimes you cannot. Sometimes you can get that exact edition in better conditions, sometimes you cannot. Sometimes you buy a lot of used books, and cannot check every one of them. It's always a disappointment to find a book with pages all scribbled over.

> I doubt any of my books will end up with you

You're being too literal here.

If you don't care about my "peculiarities", just don't engage with me. Someone mentioned their attitude towards scribbling, and I cared enough to offer a counterargument on why I dislike it.

[Mikhail_Edoshin]

No.

[moffkalast]

> Destroy the spine

That's why I got an e-reader in the first place all those years ago, fucking books closing themselves all the time. Terrible UX, smh.

[majima]

no, I'd rather use sticky notes or washi tape