Some people read books with a pen at the ready, jotting down thoughts as they arise and highlighting certain points. I've never been able to do that.

To me, writing something in a published book is like tearing out one of the pages. It's defacing the book itself. I know that's a little silly, when it's your property, you're allowed to do what you want with it, it's not vandalism to alter it. Some people say that writing in a book improves their connection to the book, that it's more personally "theirs." I'm just not one of those people, I can't do it.

Another part of it is that I don't believe that reading is a process that should require anything other than me and some words. If I want to go for a walk and find a place to read, all I should need is a book. If I suddenly need more tools for the job (i.e. a pen), it suddenly seems like a complicated operation that isn't relaxing. (I'm not trying to say it's wrong, I'm just talking about how I feel).

What I do is discretely fold over the bottom corner of the page, when I encounter something interesting that I think would be worth revisiting at some point. I have a shelf full of books with no notations other than these small folds, and I have yet to ever go through them to actually do that revisiting. I wonder if it'll be as easy to figure out what on the page I found interesting as I originally assume.


That's all I had to say, no real point here. What about you other readers out there? Are you the fill-the-margins-to-the-brim types? Or do you prefer to keep those thoughts as thoughts, like me?