I agree that when the book is for one's personal use, there's nothing wrong with writing in it. Authors, of course, write in books all the time, and surprisingly that takes some of us a bit of effort to get over on the first autographing session.

I tend to commit a different heresy: When I'm reading a book and have to stop, I open it and lay it flat to mark the page. Some of my book-o-phile friends have looked at me like I'm the Antichrist for that…

Don't deface your books just because, right now, they belong to you. Someone else may want to read them, someday.

If you would like to keep notes about the books you read, may I suggest a good composition or moleskin notebook instead? You could even type up your notes into a big Wiki for convenient indexing and searching, should you require.

Honestly — since I'm a SCHOOL librarian, and thus also and always a teacher — would have come from someone actually going "hey, I never thought of it that way." I find that benbenek's conclusion is entirely untrustworthy, though, and perhaps proves that, whether he knows what a Troll IS or not, he sure knows how to bait — almost a protoype of the term.

Thanks, though, to all — especially JW — for continuing so long. For me, at least, the value here was in no small amount threefold: a) original post and brainprompt, b) the marginalia I produced throughout the open comments section, and c) watching JW model continued responses and marginalia on a level to which I continue to aspire.

Sigh. One day, I too hope to begin writing a book. My wife actually brought it up last week; she's suggesting I take the summer off for it. If I do, JW's idea is a wonderful one — and it perhaps anticipates printing a book with extrawide margins so others will be truly encouraged?

JW, you seem overly-obsessed with this topic now.
It's Chritstmas…lighten-up and have some nog
and get away from the life-hacking and intense
blogging for a while…maybe rent something good
from Netflix ("Elf" is fun and Bob Newhart's in it)

PS – if you would, please delete my posts on this topic.
I've changed my mind concerning several of my own points
and have almost made a complete 360.

PSS – that'll be the day when I ever
walk into a Star Trek convention.

cheers

Many of your statements fit that description. Sarcasm is hard to convey in quick forum comments, as evidenced by your taking my final estate comments literally instead of the sarcasm *I* intended.

I'm not "eerily detached" to books. As I said, I *love* books, buy lots of them and got a degree in reading and writing them. However, where I became attached to the written word, you seem to have become attached to bound dead trees with ink on them. Do I also love some of those physical objects? Absolutely. But, I'm more attached to the words and images in them than to the form they take.

I have plenty of emotion about this issue (or I would have stopped responding days ago). However, I don't believe that I'll convince anyone who has your emotional position on this of my position by *using* those emotional arguments. My original posting talked about how much I enjoy reading books this way, how much I get out of them, etc. Those *are* emotional perspectives. However, you and others jumped straight to calling those positions "selfish" and accusing me of steps toward book burning.

Book burning is not dangerous because 400 sheets of paper between 2 leather covers is burned. I've never heard of a single instance of a society burning books because of their physical form. There are no "damn paperback" book burnings. There are no "acid-free paper only" book burnings. Rather, book burnings are ALWAYS about the content printed in them.

My use of notetaking and active physical manipulation allows me GREATER access to that content. It allows me to better understand and retrieve that knowledge and information.

When the reverence is tied purely to the physical form rather than the respect for the words and ideas printed on the paper, you're in dangerous territory as well. You yourself advocated digital "book burning" in this discussion.

You said, "HTML text can be deleted with a simple backspace." To me, you've just said that it's OK to delete words and ideas that I don't agree with. How you can on the one hand accuse *me* of being just on the *path* to dangerous territory while you yourself are directly advocating the destination of that dangerous path?

You're bundling all of your respect for the written word into a single form: books. By focusing on that form, you're ignoring the fact that book burning isn't about fire and paper any more than rape is about sex. Rape is about violence and power and book burning is about the destruction of objectionable ideas. It just takes the form of fire and paper.

When I compare the relative value of the types of books, I'm comparing the relative value of the physical objects. Are you telling me that your library doesn't put more value on an original 15th century Chaucer manuscript than on the exact same manuscript text in the $1 Dover edition?

Note that I am not denegrating the collecting or reverence of the physical objects. However, to me, that reverence has parallels with the collection of other physical objects: stamps, currency, candy packaging, pens and coins. In all of those markets, the relative value is tied to the relative rarity. And, given the natural deterioration of all of those objects, more value is placed on those in mint condition as they're the rarest instances of the objects.

As *historical* objects, notes often ADD to their historical value. While the marks in your book bug you today, they're the kind of thing that enhances the archeological interpretation of the artifact. 900 years from now, the fact that someone found the ideas in the book objectionable will add to the interpretation of the text itself. If there were a second set of notes serving as counterpoint it would further enhance the context of the book.

You state that you see this as an interesting parade of ideas. Yet, when published, this posting was pristine, would fit on a single sheet of paper and expressed a single perspective. It's now littered with comments, many of which I disagree with just as much as you disagree with the comments in your book. Yet, you see the page as it exists now as greater than the original that I published.

So do I. But, if I viewed the text of my article the same way you view writing published on the page, only the original posting would exist.

As a clean, neat article and web page, this posting is completely "defaced". You and the others who commented did so "without shame". Why? Because you felt your ideas would further the conversation. You believed that your additions belonged right next to my original expression. In short, you believed all of the same things about the writing on this site that I believe about the writing in paper books.

But, you didn't feel the religious guilt about it because the conventions of blogs and websites allow you freely contribute to the original text and to put your signature on those contributions.

I agree with that. However, I believe that the free interchange of ideas, that the open conversations, that equality of author and reader is of the utmost important. Where we appear to differ is that I *passionately* believe that that doesn't stop at the boundaries of the Internet. I believe that it carries over to the printed page. I believe that the conventions that have opened the Internet's writing to greater use are just as applicable to paper: bookmarks, annotations and convenient formats.

So, are you more attached to the physical artifact or to the content?

I've stuck to your topic with every post I've made.

————

J Wynia:
However, I’m going to make this one response and ask that benbenek either dial back the hostility a few notches

I must admit that I'm always adamant about my own opinions (including the opinions and comments on this page) – hostile I am not.
And besides, most trolls that I've encountered (I have my own message board) are usually incapable of making valid points about online topics. My points are valid, they're not hostile troll points. Now, sarcasm is a different story.
I am sarcastic…but sarcasm is not necessarily hostility. Sarcasm can be used to make points and to disarm faulty arguments.

————

J Wynia:
If “straw man” is a confusing term to you…

I know what a 'straw man' is. I was just surprized to see it so often in one posting are on the internet. It's sort of an archaic term and (in my opinion) sort of weird to see repeatedly (ie; used by more than one post-er)

————

J Wynia:
Again, a trip to the rhetorical structures and logic department of your library might be in order.

So, to you this whole discussion is nothing but logic and rhetoric? Where's your passion in this?
Where's your heart and feelings about this topic?
To me, you appear to be eerily detached from the very topic you started.It's disheartening to me to see such an obviously intelligent person (you) flying the flag for book-defacement…in fact, you're encouraging book-defacement without any shame.

————

J Wynia:
"Book” is a fairly generic term that runs the gamut from the handbound leather-covered volumes from the 15th century to $2 romance novels. To compare them on equal footing is absurd.

No, no, no…as objects, as things, ALL BOOKS ARE EQUAL. You're getting into shaky territory here. This is the kind of thinking that leads to book-burning and banning ("this book is good, this one is medium-bad, this one is really bad")

A child's copy of "Cat in the Hat" is completely and absolutly equal to an original edition of The Gutenberg Bible…no question, no sarcasm, no hostility.

Maybe you believe all books are unequal and worth is dependent on individual tastes. I don't agree. It's like saying that an old Jellroll Morton rag is worth more than the latest song by Green Day. There's no evidence that supports this, rhetorically or otherwise.

————

J Wynia:
The problem with using anecdotes as the basis of your argument is that a counter-anecdote results in a stalemate.

We are at no stalemate…I'm continuing my valid arguments using anecdotes, facts, opinions, feelings, sarcasm,ideas and assertions…and humour (humour's the one they usually leave out in debating class) I'm using much more than simple-minded anecdotes.

————

J Wynia:
The whole point of my posting was to use these methods to more actively *use* the books, to get more out of them privately and personally.

And this is what we've been talking about. We've been talking about the extremes of using books (and the stuff in between)

Books are meant to be read…that's what they're used for. Right now, I can't think of any book that isn't read somehow. Now, anything beyond that is up to the individual. I just happen to think that scribbling all over books, folding corners and "personalizing" books does great harm…to the book and to subsequent readers.
That's what I've been arguing about.

So far, none of the "pro-defacing" opinions I've read seem to hold any water. They just seem to support the idea that people are basically selfish and uncaring.

————

J Wynia
The rest will be donated, along with the entirety of my estate to charity. Will that calm you down?

Gosh, now who's being hostile? Hey, thanks for opening up this whole topic. It's really a tender one for a lot of people…and it's a topic I never really thought about in any depth.
Hopefully more folks will come across this post and add to the interesting parade of ideas.

ben, you seem intent on *deliberately* misunderstanding what are entirely cogent statements by completely qualified professionals. My response in 10 points:

1. If "straw man" is a confusing term to you, you may want to visit the section of your distinguished library that deals with rhetorical structures and logical fallacies. Or read this Wikipedia article.

2. A good rule of thumb is to take anyone who claims to be a "real" anything with a dump truck full of salt. In an average week, I buy 3-4 books. I've read voraciously since I was a kid and spent most of my weekend evenings in college holed up in the library. I wasn't doing homework. I was just enjoying access to that many books. Phrases like "most of us real book lovers are disgusted" are inflammatory, ignorant arrogance, dressed up in academic dress. I am as big a fan of "books" as you are.
3. "Book" is a fairly generic term that runs the gamut from the handbound leather-covered volumes from the 15th century to $2 romance novels. To compare them on equal footing is absurd. Today there *are* books that are prepared with great care, on high quality paper that, via the care the publisher has put into the printing, have *earned* the respect of careful treatment. My copy of the complete Calvin and Hobbes is something I treasure and treat with great care as are the copies of Edward Tufte's books. I wouldn't write on them, because they have greater value to me. However, the value has little to do with whether they are "books" or not. I've also got single sheets of paper that I treat with respect. I'm sure you'd be more willing to use a printout of this discussion before your college diploma if both were printed on the same paper stock. That wouldn't mean you don't have respect for "paper".

Consider stamps. Basic stamps for everyday use are worth thousands 80 years later. That doesn't change the fact that you slap them on envelopes every day and let them get all marked up to serve your purposes to mail your bill payments.

4. The value of the multi-hundred year old books has more to do with the rarity of the printed and bound form at the time than that they are "books". If 1 out of every 3 copies of those books had had it's cover torn off and the rest thrown into a dumpster at the bookstore to avoid paying for shipping of the whole book back to the publisher. If those same books were not to be taken out of the dumpster UNDER PENALTY OF LAW. If those same books contained a notice indicating that the coverless book is stolen. If those books had been printed on acid-filled paper that yellowed 10 shades in 6 months. If those books were printed by the millions, they'd be treated differently.

5. If you refrain from painting everyone who writes in books and folds pages as ignorant vandals based on the anecdotal situation of your book's ignorant previous owner, I'll refrain from painting all commenters on my blog as incoherent trolls based on your comments.

6. When you buy used books, you might think to look through them first. If it really is so marked up, why did you buy that copy instead of another. Given that Amazon alone lists 17 copies of that book available in used condition, with copies at $2.03 specifically noting them in unmarked condition, I can't imagine it having been that difficult to avoid the offensive copy in the first place. Tell you what, email me your address and I'll replace the copy for you. It's got to be cheaper than the blood pressure medication.
7. As a counter-anecdote, *I* have a copy of "The History of the English Language" from a professor of mine that has more useful information in the margins than in the text. It's got research notes from his review of original documents at Oxford. I assure you that the notes my father has made in his Bible are worth far more to me than yet another copy of the text. Most of the Bibles from my parents house (lots of them) will likely not be kept by me, but the ones they have written in over years of personal meditations, prayer and study will be treasured.

8. The problem with using anecdotes as the basis of your argument is that a counter-anecdote results in a stalemate. Nearly everything you've used as support material for your arguments has been anecdotal. Again, a trip to the rhetorical structures and logic department of your library might be in order.
9. This is NOT about ego. Do you have some vision of us walking around in public, waving our notes around to impress any academics who might be in the vicinity? The whole point of my posting was to use these methods to more actively *use* the books, to get more out of them privately and personally. Most things done for ego purposes aren't tucked away on bookshelves only to be discovered after the funeral.
10. I hereby promise to make part of the fullfillment of my will that every book be examined and it's relative worth to the market determined. For those that I've both "defaced" and pristine copies not available on the used market for reasonable prices, money from my estate will be used to track down 3 mint copies for donation. For those that are defaced and available for the 1-5% of cover price that most books are settling at, I'll have them shredded and composted, with the resulting fertalizer used to get new saplings started growing. The rest will be donated, along with the entirety of my estate to charity. Will that calm you down?

OK, point 11 and I promise I'll drop it. When I finish my novel and publish it, I'd love to hear from people who write in it. Of course, I'm also cool with someone taking the text and hand-writing the text onto hand-scraped vellum and selling the leatherbound volumes for 10's of thousands of dollars and not giving me a penny, so I'm probably not the best case to use as anecdotal evidence.

Thank you, Lifehacker for hacking my book to pieces.

Yeah, I know…go out and get another copy…thanks for the advice, Lifehackers.

Suppose Einstein or Ben Franklin had written notes in the margins of their books.. would those books not be more treasured today for their writings? Couldn't reading those notes possibly give you another p.o.v or base for your own thoughts? On the other hand, you never have to buy that "ruined, marked up" book. "Messing up" a book doesn't necessarily decrease it's value, and as I think Boyhowdy said, there are hundreds of other copies of any one book for those that like pristine books to buy instead of those that have been "defaced".

Everyone can make their own decision as to whether they write in their own books that are in their own personal collection, nobody will force you to, and nobody will force you to buy a book with markings in it. Just continue on buying the used books that are in pristine condition. I would've thought that were obvious.
Just my 2 cents.

I've never seen the phrase "straw men/man" used so much in
a comment section…must be a life-hacking catch phrase

——–

Boyhowdy Says:
Oh, and ride-pimping? As in “Pimp My Ride?” As in taking something that you own and adding value by personalizing it, and with pride?

At it's barest essence, scribbling margin notes in a book only adds ego-value to a book ("Look, see! Those are MY comments, right next to the authors!" And see those underlines? Yes…all mine…and the dog-ears?…I must admit they're mine, too…yes, this is my book alrighty…")

Most of us real book lovers are disgusted by the site of someone else's hackneyed, fading, poorly-handwriten, shaky ink notes in the precious (used) books we buy…unless the notes happen to contain winning lottery numbers (or the secret to eternal youth and liberty for all), then in that case bring on the scribbles.

——–

Boyhowdy Says:
…but isn’t aware of other phenom in culture in which personalization is celebrated

OK, so let's just call margin notes and dog-earing "book personalizing" – - now it can happily exist with other bits of personalizing, such as ugly and/or dumb-looking tatoos, ugly and/or dumb-looking tongue-piercings, ugly and/or dumb-looking breast enhancement(s), ugly and/or dumb-looking botox treatments and ugly and/or dumb-looking extreme makeovers and/or "ride-pimpin' in general

——–

I was a librarian for a pretty distinguished library and
was also in charge of organizing the archives, which contained books that went back to the late 1500s, manuscripts, letters, books with author annotations and corrections (an exception to the rule of rampant margin-osity)

After working around centuries-old, fragile, leather-bound books-with-spines-that-crack-when-you-open-them, I developed a clear knowledge of "book as sacred object" – now, once I had that realization, it was just a hop-skip-and-a-jump to the notion that EVERY book is sacred (even books written by jerks, and political crackpots and wackos and nutcases and Stephen King)

It's all relative, I suppose. One is probably not going to burn in
hell for jotting down a recipe in the margin of a book by Dr. Phil or Al Franken. But scribbling an outline of a love-letter to your neighbor's wife in a copy of The Bible might get you a one-way ticket to Hades.

By the way, what's the general concensus on making notes and ugly dog-ears in big, expensive coffee table ART BOOKS ?? Like, is it OK to "personalize" a big Salvador Dali art book…or is it cool to personalize a nice, pricy book containing Jazz photographs from the early 20th Century?

Oh, and ride-pimping? As in "Pimp My Ride?" As in taking something that you own and adding value by personalizing it, and with pride? Not sure what to think of someone who not only can't accept that personalizing one's own books is not selfish as it has nothing to do with posterity (that's what library copies and mass printing are FOR), but isn't aware of other phenom in culture in which personalization is celebrated, except to say: broaden your horizons; watch the world; accept that there is enough in the world that you need neither ridicule nor insist on communal ownership of this here copy of this here book I bought.

So says yet another librarian. Who buys books to read 'em, and writes in them to understand 'em better and add value to 'em. Who buys second copies to pass along (not an either-or, theorist!) if the books are worth it. Who writes in his own copy only, and dogears for the diversity of dogear rather than accept the tyranny (less hack-able potential) of the same-sized Book Dart. Who writes in them because he is an optimist, in that writing means I believe I can continue to engage in a text ongoing and forever. And who buys yet another copy for the library if there is a risk the book might disappear.

Too many false dichotomies and straw-men here, so this will be my last visit. Thanks for the crayons, benbenek — my three-year-old will enjoy learning to mark up her books, too (we buy a second copy to keep pristine for her later years). And thank goodness for Wymia's footer below, which helps keep me sane.

Boyhowdy Says:
To wit: though a Hummer owner surely wouldn’t want folks to key his car, we’re not talking about car-keying, but ride-pimping.

I thought we were talking about dog-earing and scribbling in books…I didn't mention ride-pimping…what IS ride-pimping?
Sounds fun.

———-

Boyhowdy Says:
I continue to maintain that I as current owner get to decide if there will be a future owner of a book or not.

Cool…we all create our own reality. Yours will just contain
messy, unreadable books that no on in the future can use. It sounds like you'll even destroy your books so that no one else will ever read them. Sounds like a reasonable plan. After all,
**you get to decide** – yep, this generation just cares about themselves…me, me, me

It's funny (and ironic) that some people in this posting area are arguing for the defacing, folding and mutilating of books. As if writing in a book with a ball-point pen somehow gives them power and control. To me the act is similar to playing with one's food.

———-

Boyhowdy Says:
there are a thousand copies of that same book and a hundred others that no one wants, period.

Yeah, OK…and how exactly does this
relate to dog-earing and writing in books?

———-

Boyhowdy Says:
for us all to write in our own books to our heart’s content, and still leave enough for all the posterity we can imagine.

Now you're starting to sound real nutty.
Post your address and I'll send you a 64 pack
of Crayola crayons to get you going…and I'll
even throw-in some chisel-point Sharpies

———-

Where does the myth that librarians value books as physical objects come from? I know many librarians and grad students in Info Studies, and none of them value books as physical objects as I do. They tend to be focused on disseminating the information contained in books, and are interested in the condition of books to the degree that it affects their acquisitions budgets. Obviously, librarians will vary on the "sacredness of books" issue, and I'm just thinking of the ones I know.

To order the oh so wonderful Book Darts directly from the manufacturer, visit bookdarts.com. Right now they have a special of 375 darts for $30, which is a pretty sweet deal. The adhesive page tabs damage paper, which is an important consideration for a researcher using old texts.

Again: as books are produced by the masses, not the singles; as books, too, are now easily re-producible; for all these reasons and more, I continue to maintain that I as current owner get to decide if there will be a future owner of a book or not.

And, by the way: speak not of false demand, of a thousand possible usedbook users that really wish I had not written in THAT book. The very idea that all books are somehow sacred, and that most will have a future owner, is just not borne out by the experience of the real world of the ten thousand copy printing.

As we librarians know, the weeding process (and the sad truth of the eternally unsold reams that are the subsequent library used book sale) itself belies the sad truth: for every book in good enough condition to be both sold as used and, more importantly, seen as desirable to a second purchaser, there are a thousand copies of that same book and a hundred others that no one wants, period.

It does not denigrate your or my own love of the used book to remember that, for better or worse, there are enough books in the world, according to all use patterns and real-world scenarios (as opposed to dire bookloss predictions and fearmongering), for us all to write in our own books to our heart's content, and still leave enough for all the posterity we can imagine.

I don't know about you, but I type with my fingers…so I leave fingerprints all over blogs.
Your analogy doesn't really fly. HTML text can be deleted with a simple backspace.
Ball-point pen ink definitely sinks into the pages of a book and becomes part of it for
the rest of it's literary history

Mona says:
And why do we elevate the book to an artifact to be saved and cherished?

First of, all books ARE artifacts (objects made by human beings)…and a lot of people cherish books.
There's no *why* about it.

Some people cherish their Hummers. I'm sure most Hummer owners would prefer that strangers didn't key their car. Similarly, many of us wise book owners would rather have non-defaced books,
Some of us would rather pay attention to the author and NOT to some guy with a Bic who needed to jot down some pointless, personal salient points.

Duane Gran Says:
Writing in the margin for me is a great way to decompose the
(errant, in my opinion) distinction between the observer and the observed.

Do you also stick your head in boiling soup in order to decompose(?)
the distinction between you (the observer) and the soup (the observed)?

The distinction between the observed (book) and observer (reader) is
already broken instantaneously when one reads…scanning words
and comprehending some meaning is the great unifier…book and reader become ONE!

Boyhowdy Says:
to set up a hypothetical future reader as having more importance to
any measure of potential book-engagement than I, the current owner, is a bit silly, isn’t it?

No, no…the concern isn't for a "hypothetical future reader" – -
the concern is for ALL POTENTIAL FUTURE READERS of any given book

It's a hallmark of this generation to care only for themselves
and THEIR THINGS, and not to care at all for kids growing up today

All books have the real potential of being read again (and again and again)

I tell ya, if I loaned one of my books to any of you folks and it came back
all marked-up with your thoughts and ideas crammed in the margins
I'd blow a fuse and hurriedly call the book police.

I would recommend to you this book that deals with active reading in great detail.

Adler, M. & Van Doren, C. (1972). How to read a book. New York: MJF Books.

Cheers.

I used to use Post-Its like nuts, but these are better. I'll write notes, but I can't dogear.