All of my literature classes at university consisted of binders full of books that I copied/printed. I would highlight/scribble through all of it but I like to leave the original books untouched.Originally Posted by OrphanPip
All of my literature classes at university consisted of binders full of books that I copied/printed. I would highlight/scribble through all of it but I like to leave the original books untouched.
I'm losing all those stupid games
That I swore I'd never play
O don't do it a lot. Doing it destroys your concentration. Instead I try to remember. As I read classics a lot, there are e-texts available for when I can't remember where something is that was important and I can just look for a word I remember was there.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
I don't know whether it aids comprehension, but it irritates me when I buy a second hand book from Amazon or a charity shop to find someone had underlined sections of it. I found this when I bought a copy of New Grub Street from an Oxfam Shop. It annoyed me so much that I bought an eraser and rubbed out all the underlining.
According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
Charles Dickens, by George Orwell
I write notes in the front and back of labyrinthine novels like those of Gaddis, Pynchon, and David Foster Wallace, and occasionally underline—in pencil—if I wish to refer to the aforementioned notes. In some of these novels there are networks of connections almost impossible to grasp on a single reading.
I think that marking up books gets in the way of reading and messes up books.
Vladimir Nabokov did it (acc. some photocopies of his margin notes in "Lectures on Literature").
i'm finding this to be the case.
“the sense of being which in calm hours arises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source.... Here is the fountain of action and of thought....
I'm totally irreverent about my books: I jot in the margins, underline, draw stars, !s; I dog-ear pages, dribble coffee on them.
The way I see it, I like a book that talks to me. And I like to talk back to it.
“Oh crap”
-- Hellboy
It depends on what I'm reading. Annotations assist me in understanding poems and short stories, but I find it tedious for novels. I've recently been forced to annotate a simplistic, horrendous novel in a general way for an assignment, and it's quite redundant. If I do annotate a novel, it's always on my second reading of the novel, for the reader rarely has enough information during a first read to write coherent annotations. My annotations usually pertain to specific elements of the text rather than the plot itself or general character development.
yup same here. I've begun to shy away from annotating in general.
“the sense of being which in calm hours arises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source.... Here is the fountain of action and of thought....
I don't like writing in my books. I also don't care to read books that have a lot of writing in them. I once bought a used copy of "West With the Night," only to discover that it had been written in extensively. I got rid of it and got a new used and clean copy.
That said, I can see that it would be useful, especially for literature students, or academics. It's a little embarrassing to admit, since I've taught AP and attempted to teach my students to annotate themselves. Anyway, I'm generally reading for pleasure. If I was reading something challenging, I like the idea of those tiny little post it notes.
I think it would interrupt my train of thought. Maybe, OP, you can read a chapter once for comprehension, then go back with your pen.
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its' own reason for existing." ~ Albert Einstein
"Remember, no matter where you go, there you are." Buckaroo Bonzai "Some people say I done alright for a girl." Melanie Safka
For me, it's helpful.
BURN in hell, blasphemous you!
Just kidding.
I also prefer using a notebook or post-its. Only when I hadto learn and could consider the books being school/study books than I could overcome myself to mark things directly, because for learning this was really helpful.
I highlight and scribble in the margins a lot because I have epiphanies as I read that are difficult to remember if I do not jot them down. I really just always have the pen ready, in my hand. Since I am a college student, taking the quick notes in literature textbooks (for example) is helpful because the ideas I get while reading literature are ideal to bring up in class as discussion points. Maybe it's just a shortcut since I have bad memory, but I only ever do this with textbooks. Never have I found it necessary to write in novels.
I might start to find it necessary writing in novels. You say that about bad memory... When I used to read a book, I could remember the smallest of details that would be referenced later in the novel (say, a note that someone gave to someone else, but not really made a great deal of; or a certain handkerchief or something). Now, at 31 () I can't remember and I catch myself trying to figure out what that situation was again. I'll have to start marking pages and sentences...
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
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