I couldn’t have picked a better day to start blogging for the Booking Through Thursday meme because the topic this week is one that’s very close to my heart. The question reads:
Are you a spine breaker? Or a dog-earer? Do you expect to keep your books in pristine condition even after you have read them? Does watching other readers bend the cover all the way round make you flinch or squeal in pain?
The fact of the matter is I abhor with a passion, any kind of book damage whatsoever. Scuffs…[gasp], scratches…[ugghh!], dents…[shiver!], dog eared pages…[grrrr!], spine damage…[cringe!], and the worst thing of all, the thing that made taking books from the university library a living hell for me, pencil/pen ANNOTATION…[growl! snarl! snap!]. All of these things drive me wild, to the point of rage, and I seriously wonder if I must have some kind of condition because surely it’s not right to be so obsessed with wishing to keep a book as pristine as possible, is it?
No seriously I’m bad, really bad. I’m ashamed to admit it but I’ve actually taught my kids how to read a book without putting a single crease in the spine, and shamefully I’ve driven my wife away from reading any new book I buy, through fear of damaging it in any way. I’m not proud of myself, I’m really not, but I just have so much reverence for books that there’s no other way than the pristine way for me.
**This post has been specifically written for Booking Through Thursday participation**
About Rob
“HOW TO MARK A BOOK,”
by Mortimer Adler
You know you have to read “between the lines” to get the most out of
anything. I want to persuade you to do something equally important in the
course of your reading. I want to persuade you to write between the lines.
Unless you do, you are not likely to do the most efficient kind of reading.
I contend, quite bluntly, that marking up a book is not an act
mutilation but of love.
You shouldn’t mark up a book which isn’t yours. Librarians (or your
friends) who
lend you books expect you to keep them clean, and you should. If you decide
that I am right about the usefulness of marking books, you will have to buy
them. Most of the world’s great books are available today, in reprint
editions.
There are two ways in which one can own a book. The first is the
property right you establish by paying for it, just as you pay for clothes
and furniture. But this act of purchase is only the prelude to possession.
Full ownership comes only when you have made it a part of yourself, and the
best way to make yourself a part of it is by writing in it. An illustration
may make the point clear. You buy a beefsteak and transfer it from the
butcher’s icebox to your own. But you do not own the beefsteak in the most
important sense until you consume it and get it into your bloodstream. I am
arguing that books, too, must be absorbed in your blood stream to do you
any good.
Confusion about what it means to “own” a book leads people to a
false reverence for paper, binding, and type — a respect for the physical
thing — the craft of the printer rather than the genius of the author.
They forget that it is possible for a man to acquire the idea, to possess
the beauty, which a great book contains, without staking his claim by
pasting his bookplate inside the cover. Having a fine library doesn’t prove
that is owner has a mind enriched by books; it proves nothing more than
that he, his father, or his wife, was rich enough to buy them.
There are three kinds of book owners. The first has all the
standard sets and best sellers — unread, untouched. (This deluded
individual owns woodpulp and ink, not books.) The second has a great many
books — a few of them read through, most of them dipped into, but all of
them as clean and shiny as the day they were bought. (This person would
probably like to make books his own, but is restrained by a false respect
for their physical appearance.) The third has a few books or many — every
one of them dog-eared and dilapidated, shaken and loosened by continual
use, marked and scribbled in from front to back. (This man owns books.)
Is it false respect, you may ask, to preserve intact and
unblemished a beautifully printed book, an elegantly bound edition? Of
course not. I’d no more scribble all over a first edition of ‘Paradise
Lost’ than I’d give my baby a set of crayons and an original Rembrandt. I
wouldn’t mark up a painting or a statue. Its soul, so to speak, is
inseparable from its body. And the beauty of a rare edition or of a richly
manufactured volume is like that of a painting or a statue.
But the soul of a book “can” be separate from its body. A book is
more like the score of a piece of music than it is like a painting. No
great musician confuses a symphony with the printed sheets of music. Arturo
Toscanini reveres Brahms, but Toscanini’s score of the G minor Symphony is
so thoroughly marked up that no one but the maestro himself can read it.
The reason why a great conductor makes notations on his musical scores –
marks them up again and again each time he returns to study them–is the
reason why you should mark your books. If your respect for magnificent
binding or typography gets in the way, buy yourself a cheap edition and pay
your respects to the author.
Why is marking up a book indispensable to reading? First, it keeps
you awake. (And I don’t mean merely conscious; I mean awake.) In the second
place; reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express
itself in words, spoken or written. The marked book is usually the
thought-through book. Finally, writing helps you remember the thoughts you
had, or the thoughts the author expressed. Let me develop these three
points.
If reading is to accomplish anything more than passing time, it
must be active. You can’t let your eyes glide across the lines of a book
and come up with an understanding of what you have read. Now an ordinary
piece of light fiction, like, say, “Gone With the Wind,” doesn’t require
the most active kind of reading. The books you read for pleasure can be
read in a state of relaxation, and nothing is lost. But a great book, rich
in ideas and beauty, a book that raises and tries to answer great
fundamental questions, demands the most active reading of which you are
capable. You don’t absorb the ideas of John Dewey the way you absorb the
crooning of Mr. Vallee. You have reach for them. That you cannot do while
you’re asleep.
If, when you’ve finished reading a book, the pages are filled with
your notes, you know that you read actively. The most famous “active”
reader of great books I know is President Hutchins, of the University of
Chicago. He also has the hardest schedule of business activities of any man
I know. He invariably reads with a pencil, and sometimes, when he picks up
a book and pencil in the evening, he finds himself, instead of making
intelligent notes, drawing what he calls ‘caviar factories’ on the margins.
When that happens, he puts the book down. He knows he’s too tired to read,
and he’s just wasting time.
But, you may ask, why is writing necessary? Well, the physical act
of writing, with your own hand, brings words and sentences more sharply
before your mind and preserves them better in your memory. To set down your
reaction to important words and sentences you have read, and the questions
they have raised in your mind, is to preserve those reactions and sharpen
those questions.
Even if you wrote on a scratch pad, and threw the paper away when
you had finished writing, your grasp of the book would be surer. But you
don’t have to throw the paper away. The margins (top and bottom, and well
as side), the end-papers, the very space between the lines, are all
available. They aren’t sacred. And, best of all, your marks and notes
become an integral part of the book and stay there forever. You can pick up
the book the following week or year, and there are all your points of
agreement, disagreement, doubt, and inquiry. It’s like resuming an
interrupted conversation with the advantage of being able to pick up where
you left off.
And that is exactly what reading a book should be: a conversation
between you and the author. Presumably he knows more about the subject than
you do; naturally, you’ll have the proper humility as you approach him. But
don’t let anybody tell you that a reader is supposed to be solely on the
receiving end. Understanding is a two-way operation; learning doesn’t
consist in being an empty receptacle. The learner has to question himself
and question the teacher. He even has to argue with the teacher, once he
understands what the teacher is saying. And marking a book is literally an
expression of differences, or agreements of opinion, with the author.
There are all kinds of devices for marking a book intelligently and
fruitfully.
Here’s the way I do it:
1. UNDERLINING: of major points, of important or forceful statements.
2. VERTICAL LINES AT THE MARGIN: to emphasize a statement already
underlined.
3. STAR, ASTERISK, OR OTHER DOO-DAD AT THE MARGIN: to be used
sparingly, to emphasize the ten or twenty most important statements in the
book. (You may want to fold the bottom comer of each page on which you use
such marks. It won’t hurt the sturdy paper on which most modern books are
printed, and you will be able take the book off the shelf at any time and,
by opening it at the folded-corner page, refresh your recollection of the
book.)
4. NUMBERS IN THE MARGIN: to indicate the sequence of points the
author makes in developing a single argument.
5. NUMBERS OF OTHER PAGES IN THE MARGIN: to indicate where else in
the book the author made points relevant to the point marked; to tie up the
ideas in a book, which, though they may be separated by many pages, belong
together.
6. CIRCLING OF KEY WORDS OR PHRASES.
7. WRITING IN THE MARGIN, OR AT THE TOP OR BOTTOM OF THE PAGE, FOR
THE SAKE OF: recording questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage
raised in your mind; reducing a complicated discussion to a simple
statement; recording the sequence of major points right through the books.
I use the end-papers at the back of the book to make a personal index of
the author’s points in the order of their appearance.
The front end-papers are to me the most important. Some people
reserve them for a fancy bookplate. I reserve them for fancy thinking.
After I have finished reading the book and making my personal index on the
back end-papers, I turn to the front and try to outline the book, not page
by page or point by point (I’ve already done that at the back), but as an
integrated structure, with a basic unity and an order of parts. This
outline is, to me, the measure of my understanding of the work.
If you’re a die-hard anti-book-marker, you may object that the
margins, the space between the lines, and the end-papers don’t give you
room enough. All right. How about using a scratch pad slightly smaller than
the page-size of the book — so that the edges of the sheets won’t
protrude? Make your index, outlines and even your notes on the pad, and
then insert these sheets permanently inside the front and back covers of
the book.
Or, you may say that this business of marking books is going to
slow up your reading. It probably will. That’s one of the reasons for doing
it. Most of us have been taken in by the notion that speed of reading is a
measure of our intelligence. There is no such thing as the right speed for
intelligent reading. Some things should be read quickly and effortlessly
and some should be read slowly and even laboriously. The sign of
intelligence in reading is the ability to read different things differently
according to their worth. In the case of good books, the point is not to
see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get
through you — how many you can make your own. A few friends are better
than a thousand acquaintances. If this be your aim, as it should be, you
will not be impatient if it takes more time and effort to read a great book
than it does a newspaper.
You may have one final objection to marking books. You can’t lend
them to your friends because nobody else can read them without being
distracted by your notes. Furthermore, you won’t want to lend them because
a marked copy is kind of intellectual diary, and lending it is almost like
giving your mind away.
If your friend wishes to read your “Plutarch’s Lives,
“Shakespeare,” or “The Federalist Papers,” tell him gently but firmly, to
buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat — but your books are
as much a part of you as your head or your heart.
Glad I’m not the only one who freaks out! Books should be handled with care and gentleness, just like cradling a baby in the crook.
I’m right with ya, Rob. But, hey, what’s with that Mortimer guy?
I admire you.
says:
@Matt – You’re a book angel
)
))
)
@Nicole – I think we’re getting a lesson on using books in a utilitarian way. I wasn’t going to approve it due to its rambling length but I guess there’s some good points in it (that doesn’t mean to say I agree with them though
@Sally – Hehehe…Ditto! I’ve read you’re thoughts too i.e. “it’s difficult to tell by looking at a book whether or not I’ve read it”
Mortimer Adler was a world famous educator and philosopher–he created the Great Books movement and of the 60 books he wrote, his most famous is “HOW TO READ A BOOK”–look it up.
says:
@Max – I didn’t mean to come across as rude, ignorant or lazy. If anything I was just a bit put out by the article’s full reproduction as a comment. That’s the only reason I thought twice about approving, because like I said previously there’s a lot of good stuff in there. I thank you for posting it.
I actually remember reading this before and agree with what Mr. Alder has to say to some extent. However my reverence for books would always prevent me from following his ‘marking up books’ advice. That said I went 2 years through university completely paperless, which involved scanning short-term the books I owned. Having them in electronic format, and also having a Tablet PC, meant I could, and did annotate books to my heart’s content, albeit electronically!
When it came to using physical books though I couldn’t cause them any harm. I got around my need to annotate/notetake using Post-it notes, index labels etc. It worked well too – 1 college diploma (HND Multimedia Development) and 2 university degrees (BSc. Multimedia Technology, MA Medieval History and Archaeology) and not a single pencil mark on a single physical book.
Thanks again for your input Max, and apologies again if my response seemed less than cordial
Rob
I hate hate hate reading books which have been marked and underlined in. Especially yellow (or other color) highlighters. It was always awful picking through the used textbooks in college to try and find ones with clean pages.
says:
That’s a whole lot of hate Jeane
) but I really DO feel you’re pain. It’s bad enough annotating a book you own yourself in my mind, but to scribble all over somebody else’s – inexcusable!