Do you make notes or underline words in your books?

I wish this were true. Sounds fun.

OC cringe please

The ink is from my first reading. The highlighter is some gay shit my teacher made me do when I was reading it for school. Be gentle.

I underline, write notes, and have a system of symbols for various standard stuff that goes in the margins. The better the book the more notes, in general.

whats the problem with trying to pick apart something youre interested in?

Oh, nothing really. In fact annotating helped me digest the book much better than if I hadn't. But still, one of my favorite novels has been defaced by stuff that is usually either plain wrong or spelled out on the page.

2insightful4you

Oh I thought you were knocking yourself for digesting it that way in the past. I think its cool when people jot down notes and understand whats really being said. Although if youre wrong about it then i can see how that is embarrassing lol

God no. I'd never ruin a book like that. I have made much use of stickies though.

Saying something obvious is worse than saying something wrong. At least if you're wrong people might believe you; if you state the obvious everyone knows that you're dumb.

I don't read physical books, so I miss out on that experience. Even so, I have an excellent retention when it comes to something I've just read, so I only have to take notes on books that require more than one of two reading sessions

>In fact annotating helped me digest the book much better than if I hadn't. But still, one of my favorite novels has been defaced by stuff that is usually either plain wrong or spelled out on the page.

I'd argue that even wrong annotations will help you understand a text. Your idea could be wrong, your conclusions could be wrong, but the idea is still tossing around in your head. My annotations (also always ink) inevitably become more sophisticated and accurate as I progress through a book. In retrospect the early ones are usually very vague or just garbage, but it's because I made those shitty notes that I was able to get something more out of the book by the end.

Also just writing stuff down helps me remember it, which is great especially for nonfiction.

That is kind of nice. Why are you embarrassed of this?

It depends on the edition. I never write in a rare edition or a particularly unique edition or an edition of high quality. I do write in other editions; I put down notes, reactions, underlines, parentheses, and arrows. I always record the colors an authors uses in his text. Those are of great importance.

Of course.

It follows in the tradition of the first books, whose margins were heavily annotated.

I prefer books with margins so I can add notes and define words and write passages

Yes.

>tfw vaguely embarassed by the fact that I annotate in English even though it's my second language

>I'd argue that even wrong annotations will help you understand a text. Your idea could be wrong, your conclusions could be wrong, but the idea is still tossing around in your head.
Oh yeah, sure. But sometimes I find myself chasing a narrative, or a theme or some symbol, and if I latch onto it in the beginning then I'll just chase whatever idea I had at the very beginning. That's my biggest problem with making annotations. I sort of decide on a thesis before I've even read the book.

>My annotations (also always ink) inevitably become more sophisticated and accurate as I progress through a book.
And this ends up being the problem in my case. Of course they get more sophisticated. But the annotations become a monster, like a positive feedback thing wherein I make some comment only because I made a similar comment a few pages ago. Idk, do you see what I'm saying?

Not at all.

I am well-educated in the English language so can absorb the author's ideas right off the page.

pretty gnarly samefag

glad we've got the samefag samefag-police patrolling this thread

This is accurate. Much better to take a chance of getting something wrong than repeating what has already been said a million times.

I do not like to mark up my books at all. I do take notes in a seperate journal though.

I underline passages in non-fiction books only