21 February 2011

If it's all good for Thomas Jefferson...

Do you write in your books? Re. this New York Times article on marginalia, I think in some ways it's already a lost art (before the advance of e-readers, I mean). I fell out of the habit of writing in my books in college when resale value was important to me but have been wandering back, somewhat.

The trouble is, once I start writing in them, I don't necessarily want to lend out those copies because the notes can feel too personal, even if they are way too cryptic to be understood. If Jefferson (PS Happy President's Day!) knew we were scanning all of his notes for insight into his personality, he may himself have felt overexposed.

3 comments:

Elizabeth said...

I need to write in order to pay attention. It's why I take copious notes at seminars (to the bemusement of those around me, who must have better memory and attention span than I do), and it's why I got a lot more out of JANE EYRE and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (which I was reading for school, and so had to pay attention) than I did out of WUTHERING HEIGHTS, which I read for fun (a library copy, so I couldn't take notes).

How much more so in college! The amount of ink I've written in my copy of MOBY-DICK rivals that of the printer.

These days I read mostly library books, which means I'm probably not getting as much out of them as I could. I still have a cognitive block between stuff I read for fun (like library books), and stuff I read for school and work: the research papers I read are covered in highlighter and pen.

Marjorie said...

I'm coming back around to marginalia, partly no doubt as a result of being in grad school, though it's sneaking into leisure reading too. Always in pencil, though. Writing in a book in pen feels wrong, as does writing in hardcovers--with those I just mark favorite parts with scraps of paper.

jess s said...

Let me tell you, I stopped writing in my margins when I read "Girl, Interrupted" and wrote some embarrassingly teen angsty things in the margins, and then found myself in the position many years later of explaining to a friend why I absolutely would not lend her a copy.