Writing in books

[BAM]

I was flicking through some of my old books lately and found that many of them had my pencil scribblings in the margin. And it got me thinking. I don't remember when I picked up the habit of underlining bits in pencil, writing comments and references to important pages, but I wonder if anyone else does it.

I seldom write in the margins of my fiction books, which surprises me because novels can have more complex plots and interconnections than some of the convoluted non-fiction I read. I do, however, underline and makes notes in books of poetry. I think my copy of Blake's Innocence and Experience has more of my writing in it than his!

So what do others think? Do you write in books? Do you underline stuff? Do you vent spleen at the author? Or do you hate it? Are books to be unsullied by your own markings? I cannot stand it if people write in pen, but I am often intrigued by other people's marginalia if I check a book out of the library.

[x359594]

...I don't remember when I picked up the habit of underlining bits in pencil, writing comments and references to important pages, but I wonder if anyone else does it...

Comrade, it's an ancient practice both East and West. Works dating from the 4th century BCE have marginal notations. Marx made marginal notes on just about everything he read. His theoretical objections to Bakunin's collectivist anarchism are found in the margins of his copy of the latter's Anarchy and the State.

[BAM]

Comrade, it's an ancient practice both East and West. Works dating from the 4th century BCE have marginal notations. Marx made marginal notes on just about everything he read. His theoretical objections to Bakunin's collectivist anarchism are found in the margins of his copy of the latter's Anarchy and the State.

wow, I didn't know it stretched back that far. I realise some other people scribble notes in books, but i was wondering how many users on here like to do so too.

Actually one thing I did pick up from Marx was his habit of copying out passages from books. It can be time-consuming sometimes but it's worth it.

[leftace53]

I can't stand it when I come across a book with scribbles in the margins. I don't mind if they put in like extra pages, or write in the title page or something. I just like my pages with the original text. However I've often gotten myself in a jam when I want to comment on something written, but I can't bring myself to write in the margins :(

[ZeroNowhere]

Comrade, it's an ancient practice both East and West. Works dating from the 4th century BCE have marginal notations. Marx made marginal notes on just about everything he read. His theoretical objections to Bakunin's collectivist anarchism are found in the margins of his copy of the latter's Anarchy and the State.I think that he had written marginal notes on Bakky's program (the 'equality of the classes' one), but the notes on 'Statism and Anarchy' were written in a version which he had copied out. If I recall correctly, this was in order to speak Russian better.

[ComradeOm]

Don't write in the margins. Feel it damages the book somehow. Instead I make notes as I go along - on a small sheet of paper that serves as a bookmark - and create an index of the book's interesting or useful points/facts/topics

[Blake's Baby]

I recently rubbed out all of my marginal notes in the 'Manifesto of the Communist Party'. But I left the pencil notes written by the previous owner.

[praxis1966]

I don't write in my books, but then again I do have a fascination with not only the words on the pages but the objects themselves that borders on bibliophile fetishism. I love the smell of a new book, the sound the pages make when you flip them quickly, etc. After the revolution, if I can't get work as a soccer coach, then my next choice profession is as something along the lines of a 'book detective' a la Johnny Depp's character in The Ninth Gate.

[Spawn of Stalin]

My local Oxfam bookshop gets quite a lot of Marxist classics and other left wing literature given to them, I don't have a clue where they are all coming from but I visit the shop twice a week and usually come away with two or three books, most of which have notes on the pages. I find it quite interesting to see what other people's interpretations of certain things are. Actually the previous owner's notes really helped me through the first few sections of Capital vol 1. I don't think I would have understood it without the notes.

[BAM]

I don't write in my books, but then again I do have a fascination with not only the words on the pages but the objects themselves that borders on bibliophile fetishism. I love the smell of a new book, the sound the pages make when you flip them quickly, etc. After the revolution, if I can't get work as a soccer coach, then my next choice profession is as something along the lines of a 'book detective' a la Johnny Depp's character in The Ninth Gate.

have you read this? You might like it:

http://www.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/benj-bookcoll.htm

There are some books in my collection that I will never write in. For example, I have an old copy of Shakespeare's Complete Works. It's not worth much, if anything, but I wouldn't write in it. Likewise is a copy of Kropotkin's Memoirs of a Revolutionist. Some of the pages in it are printed upside down, which adds to the attraction, for me.

[BAM]

My local Oxfam bookshop gets quite a lot of Marxist classics and other left wing literature given to them, I don't have a clue where they are all coming from but I visit the shop twice a week and usually come away with two or three books, most of which have notes on the pages. I find it quite interesting to see what other people's interpretations of certain things are. Actually the previous owner's notes really helped me through the first few sections of Capital vol 1. I don't think I would have understood it without the notes.

Oxfam shops are little treasures for book finds. I got Greil Marcus's situationist history Lipstick Traces for a bargain £2.49 once. I also found in the same shop a rare copy of Gerrard Winstanley's Law of Freedom for a few pence. And I think I picked up David Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy for less than a pound too.

[praxis1966]

have you read this? You might like it:

http://www.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/benj-bookcoll.htm

There are some books in my collection that I will never write in. For example, I have an old copy of Shakespeare's Complete Works. It's not worth much, if anything, but I wouldn't write in it. Likewise is a copy of Kropotkin's Memoirs of a Revolutionist. Some of the pages in it are printed upside down, which adds to the attraction, for me.

Yeah, that piece comes close to summing up the way I feel about my collection. It may be small, diminished further by assholes who won't return my stuff when I lend it to them, but what I have is really valuable to me. It's difficult to explain to people who aren't the same way especially since I don't have any early or rare editions (not for lack of wont but for lack of wallet). People just don't get why going to a public library isn't good enough, or why, to paraphrase Benjamin, I've become a criminal for my habit.

EDIT: The one rare book I used to have in my collection was The Anarchist Cookbook. Anyone who's ever tried to lay hands on a hard copy of that thing knows how difficult they are to find. Unfortunately, some fuckhead stole it from me. I know the history of it and the implications (both legal and health) of actually using the information in it so I never actually did, but that's hardly the point, you know?

[M-26-7]

I don't think I ever make it through a non-fiction book without underlining, bracketing, and making notes in the margin. Often it is just cross-referencing to other pages in the book (as when the author seems to be contradicting himself) or to another book I've read that talks about the same thing. I also sometimes add entries to the index at the back if I see a topic that keeps coming up in the book that I want to reference later, but isn't in the index already.

Sometimes I just write my own comments in the margins though. Some of my older comments are pretty embarrassing to read now.

[Blake's Baby]

Pencil is your friend. My comments in the Manifesto referred to above were written when I was 16 or 17. I'm 40 now, so my ideas have developed somewhat. And indeed the world has changed. Things I'd written before the fall of the Berlin Wall didn't seem so relevent in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century.

[Il Medico]

I don't like it when people scribble in the margins of works of art (Creative prose or poetry). Though I don't mind when it is in a book of history. The oldest book I own is a book of poetry from Robert Browning, it has but three lines written by hand, in the very front.
It says:
Presented to Florence
From C. Valentine
merry Christmas 1890

I find stuff like that quite interesting.

[BAM]

People just don't get why going to a public library isn't good enough, or why, to paraphrase Benjamin, I've become a criminal for my habit.

I can well understand why it's not the same. I aim to have a library of my own. I was lucky that a friend of a former girlfriend of mine was a retiring sociology lecturer, who gave me several boxes full of books, including some great stuff like a hardback edition of Hobsbawm's "Age of ..." trilogy and loads of old sociological classics. Unlike Benjamin, however, I've never been able to afford antiquarian books, just ultra-cheap secondhand books!


EDIT: The one rare book I used to have in my collection was The Anarchist Cookbook. Anyone who's ever tried to lay hands on a hard copy of that thing knows how difficult they are to find. Unfortunately, some fuckhead stole it from me.

Yeah, I've had that too. But, I have stolen (or "forgotten to return") about as much as I have been "stolen" from, so I guess it evens out.


Sometimes I just write my own comments in the margins though. Some of my older comments are pretty embarrassing to read now.

Mine too: I cringe when I read my younger self and some of the flowery nonsense I used to spout. That's partly what prompted this thread, reading some of my pseudo-Adorno comments I wrote when I went through my Frankfurt School phase.


Pencil is your friend. My comments in the Manifesto referred to above were written when I was 16 or 17. I'm 40 now, so my ideas have developed somewhat. And indeed the world has changed. Things I'd written before the fall of the Berlin Wall didn't seem so relevent in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century.

You should have kept them as a permanent reminder to yourself.


I don't like it when people scribble in the margins of works of art (Creative prose or poetry). Though I don't mind when it is in a book of history. The oldest book I own is a book of poetry from Robert Browning, it has but three lines written by hand, in the very front.
It says:
Presented to Florence
From C. Valentine
merry Christmas 1890

I find stuff like that quite interesting.

wow, yeah I love stuff like that too. I have an old copy of Keats poems, just a cheap Everyman edition, and it is inscribed from one lover to another - at least, that's what I assume and I like to think about connections like that, like: did he read any of it to her, and so on ...

EDIT: I guess that's my point about marginalia, it proves the book had a life before you came to it, or that the life of the book is changed by your own interaction with it.

[S.Artesian]

wow, I didn't know it stretched back that far. I realise some other people scribble notes in books, but i was wondering how many users on here like to do so too.

Actually one thing I did pick up from Marx was his habit of copying out passages from books. It can be time-consuming sometimes but it's worth it.

I write like a madman in the margins of books-- except for Marx, and books that really impress me -- then I copy out the passages by hand with page numbers, etc.

[Il Medico]

. People just don't get why going to a public library isn't good enough, or why, to paraphrase Benjamin, I've become a criminal for my habit.

I sympathize. There is just something about owning books. I have an ever growing library,but I only loan books to good friends, one who I know will return them. As for the idea of borrowing one myself, bah!

[BAM]

I write like a madman in the margins of books-- except for Marx, and books that really impress me -- then I copy out the passages by hand with page numbers, etc.

I did that for the three vols of Capital, so that I have a series of notebooks with the key passages copied out, page numbers, etc. My copes of Capital are also scribbled in - except for an old hardback copy of vol 1, which I have kept intact.

[Kuppo Shakur]

I have recently gotten into the habit of highlighting all books that I read. Anything that strikes me as a good philosophy, something I may want to cite later, etc.
Also, I recommend House of Leaves to anyone who enjoys writing in the margins of their books.:D

[kalu]

I sometimes write in a paperback book if I know it will never go out of print (ie. Heidegger's Being and Time), it isn't a rare copy, and it's a conceptually difficult work. I generally read philosophy, so I don't have much experience marking up poetry or literature. I try and avoid though writing too much, because I like to go back and read without being smacked in the face with a bunch of underlining, so now I might just circle a word or phrase in pencil, or put an exclamation mark next to an important paragraph. Before I hammered out this method, I ruined my copy of Marx's Grundrisse unfortunately by writing too much, and now that my ideas have changed a bit, I find my notes sometimes silly, irrelevant, or just plain cluttering the page (luckily it was just a Penguin paperback). That said, sometimes a few notes can give a nice "lived-in" quality to a book, present the life of a thing itself. Otherwise, I just keep several sheets of paper with me when reading a library book or something I don't want to mark, and take notes on them. Then I collect the papers in a folder with the rest of my notes. Notebooks are cumbersome, but papers you can just grab a few and take them with you anywhere, and fold and keep them in the book you're reading.

I think I'd call myself a bibliophile, I definitely notice things like the quality of the pages, binding, cover design, smell of old and new books, print period, etcetera. Blackwell and University of Minnesota Press produce awesome quality books in my opinion (paperback at least). Also, sometimes other people's marginal comments can be funny: in The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell (library version), someone had marked the page and then another person drew an arrow and wrote "Keep your comments to yourself thou art ass of an annotator." Drew a chuckle. It's also fun if people reference another work that you might not have known, to connect to a point.

One day, when I have a job and some extra cash, I'd like to become Walter Benjamin's book collector, finding the obscure versions and personal reminiscences inside the covers that really make a book valuable. "Suffice it to quote the answer which Anatole France gave to a philistine who admired his library and then finished with the standard question, 'And have you read all these books, Monsieur France?' 'Not one-tenth of them. I don't suppose you use your Sevres china every day?'"

[BAM]

Before I hammered out this method, I ruined my copy of Marx's Grundrisse unfortunately by writing too much, and now that my ideas have changed a bit, I find my notes sometimes silly, irrelevant, or just plain cluttering the page (luckily it was just a Penguin paperback).

I hate that edition of the Grundrisse. The translation is really bad (eg, verwertung [valorisation] is translated as "realisation", which means something else entirely) and the index is poor.


Also, sometimes other people's marginal comments can be funny: in The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell (library version), someone had marked the page and then another person drew an arrow and wrote "Keep your comments to yourself thou art ass of an annotator."

:lol:



One day, when I have a job and some extra cash, I'd like to become Walter Benjamin's book collector, finding the obscure versions and personal reminiscences inside the covers that really make a book valuable. "Suffice it to quote the answer which Anatole France gave to a philistine who admired his library and then finished with the standard question, 'And have you read all these books, Monsieur France?' 'Not one-tenth of them. I don't suppose you use your Sevres china every day?'"

I love that quotation - and the essay it is from too.

[kalu]

I hate that edition of the Grundrisse. The translation is really bad (eg, verwertung [valorisation] is translated as "realisation", which means something else entirely) and the index is poor.

Interesting, what other translation would you recommend? Besides the fact that I need to learn German.:lol: (one of the first languages I would learn if I had more time, I like German philosophy).

[BAM]

Use the Collected works edition in Volumes 28 & 29. They are based, I believe, on an updated transcription of the notebooks, too.

http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/cw/volume28/index.htm

http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/cw/volume29/index.htm