Scribbling in Books

I am reading. I come across a sentence or a phrase that stops me in my tracks. I read it again. Something about it hits me—a question, conjecture, a bit of truth, sometimes a truth about myself. I put a parenthesis around it and note the page number on the inside back cover of the book. And when I finish the book, I copy all the saved passages into a Word document and add them to my Commonplace Book.

The passage is part of the story. But that isn’t why I mark it. I do that because it is relevant to me that may or may not have any relevance to the tale. Another reader might also mark the passage but for entirely different reasons. Or not mark it at all. Instead she marks other passages that I quickly pass by.

Recently I bumped into Fluther, a question and answer website with a social twist. Twitter recently purchased the company that runs it. I must have found it by doing a search for underlining or highlighting passages since it was the subject of the question that appeared on my screen: Do you underline passages in books when you are reading them?

To date fifty-three individuals have described the way they do or do not write in the books they are reading. One person answered, As I read a book, I often underline or highlight passages that I find interesting, things that I can relate to, or words that are really insightful. When I re-read some books, I often reconnect with these passages instantly, but sometimes I find them odd, and wonder what state of mind or stage in life I was at when I first underlined them.

Another person confessed, I’ve always felt that it was wrong to write in books. I know lots of people do it, and many great authors and thinkers have done it, but I just can’t bring myself to write in my books, whether textbooks, novels, or non-fiction, I just can’t do it.

One reported she often bought an extra copy of a book that she had marked up, if it was one she really liked. However, no one said they took the extra step of saving their highlighted passages in electronic form, as I do.

I often ask myself why have I been saving the passages that I mark in books. Is it simply a mindless habit? Yes, I return to them now and then. However, rarely if ever do I return to a single passage and write about it. Nor do I organize a set of passages from various books that deal with a single theme. It would be good to that.

And whenever I return to the collection of passages in my Commonplace Book and open it to a randomly selected page, I am amazed at how provocative many of them are and it is almost a crime to leave them there without some kind of additional commentary or review.

Sometimes saving these passages helps me to remember the book and think once again about its story and themes. So in this way, saving them becomes a memory aid. There’s no other way I could possibly remember the books I read or the ideas in them, without saving them electronically and then printing the collection at the end of each year.

Recently Patrick Kurp wrote on his blog, Anecdotal Evidence: For years I’ve kept notebooks in which I transcribe notable passages from my reading. These commonplace books used to be almost random, organized only by chronology, but they grew unwieldy because I never found time to devise useful indexes. They were diverting to browse but almost worthless if I sought a specific passage or topic.

The fact that saving the passages electronically permits such a search is one of the major reasons I spend the extra time copying them. It is a highly effectively way to create the kind of index that Kurp seeks. He also experiences the same thing I do when I return to read some of the passages I’ve been saving all these years. It is sometimes rather startling.

At some point I started dedicating discrete notebooks to large subjects – Trees, Birds, I’ve leafed through it the last several days, marveling at the amount of insight and first-rate writing devoted to the subject, the central event in our history, the one we’re still contesting. For a sobering insight, compare the mass of words inspired by the Vietnam War. Michael Herr? Tim O’Brien

On Writing in Books

In Library Looking Glass, David Cecil wonders if writing in books is a bad practice. This is an issue about which many readers have firm convictions. Cecil admits it is certainly the wrong thing to do if a book is a “precious object, elegantly bound and on fine expensive paper.” But when it comes to the regular books we read, there is much to be said for it. Cecil says, “It helps to make a book seem more one’s own; and, unless what is written insults its author, it is a compliment to him. It treats him as a living man, with whom one wants, as it were, to converse.”

It is startling to read how similar Cecil’s routine is to mine: “In particular when anything in the text has especially struck me, I have noted on the end-paper the number of the page where this has occurred. Sometimes my note simply indicated admiration; but more often admiration of a special and personal kind. The passage referred to was beautiful or comical or well-written in ways that had a peculiar appeal to my own taste, or it stated a view which I found especially illuminating; or it stimulated in me a fruitful train of thought.”

However, I take two additional steps that Cecil apparently didn’t. When I have finished the book or however much I want to read, I copy each of the passages I have marked in a Word document. Following that, I insert them following those I have already collected in my Commonplace Book for the year. And at year’s end, I add the year’s collection to those I have been saving since 1988. In part, I do all this because the computer makes it so easy, maybe too easy. When Cecil started writing in his books, the computer was a distant dream, if that. Would he be saving his passages in electronic form today? My hunch is he would.

Of course, Cecil is talking about his own books, not those he obtained in the library. I am sure he would agree that making marks in a library book is inexcusable. But even worse is “defacing” your own books in a way that apparently Toby Lichtig does with abandon:

“…in my library anything goes: doodles, numbers, addresses, lists, recipes and the ensuing food stains.”…the marks and scrawls help me to recall the text—and crucially, the person I was when red it: how I was feeling, where I was sitting, whom I was with.”

Stephanie Hollmichel, the blogger at “So Many Books,” and a diligent keeper of a commonplace book, employs a much more civilized approach, indeed, although she marks her notable passages, it is one that doesn’t leave any marks in the book and is far more selective than the my procedure. Here is how she described her routine to me:

“When I read I keep a tin of page nibs by my side … and stick them on the pages at passages that particularly catch my attention. When I am done with the book I go back through it looking at all the passages I marked and take out the page nibs that mark passages that no longer seem all that interesting. Then I let the book sit for a day or two and go back and look at the still marked passages and make a final decision about which ones really speak to me and copy those out into my commonplace book.”

I don’t think any of these readers are going to get too excited about the iPad or any of the other e-book readers either. None of them make marking or collecting their favorite passages very straightforward. Indeed, Lichig remarks “…I intend to carry on reading as I always have: with an object I can physically alter; something I can damage with impunity. Ever-primed for action, my pen hovers restlessly just above the page.”

Mine does too, but I am certainly not going to scrawl anything across the page or leave coffee stains on it either.