Do you write in your books?

Mark Twain did! A western Connecticut town has unearthed a load of his books in which Twain, who died 100 years ago this month, energetically underlined and scribbled comments that were sometimes polite but mostly snarky.

I actually don't write in my books that much, even the ones that are important to me. I got out of the habit during college (except for books in Spanish, in which I left in translations of obscure words) and now I wish I had because I wonder what I was looking at the last time I read them. On the other hand, I have books I wrote in in high school that I can barely read for the embarrassment of my own comments. My copy of THE GREAT GATSBY is like this -- I think I may just have to buy another one.

I will often dog-ear lower corners of books I review as shorthand for "Something about this page/passage is worthy of mention, I'll get back to this." I know it's bad for the books, but I give away most of them so I'm not overly concerned with keeping them new-looking. (Naturally, I won't do either of these things in books I've borrowed -- in case you are contemplating a recall.)