Do you write on your books?

Odysseus

I just pick up my copy of Hamlet and noticed I purchased it in Nov 98, I write my Name, Month and Year on the inside cover on all my books. I just wondering if other do?

Bootsy.

I don't.

I do buy a lot of books from charity shops and often get books with people's names crossed out.

I don't see the point really, as soon as I'm finished reading a book I either give to a friend or to a charity shop (fiction books that is, I tend to keep non-fiction books for reference, but I still don't write on them!).

Turtwig

Name, Month and Year? Nope, almost never. Write on book?
It depends on the book and the purpose.

If it's a popular book read for just leisure and unwinding then I won't write on it. These usually are just books like Patterson's crap. (Not saying they're actually crap.) But the way I see it, I can rarely return books I love and I love jotting down fragments of my thoughts as I read about various character's actions. I just find it helps get me more immersed in the book on that first read through.

For anything non-fiction related those little jots actual help me better remember or understand the events or arguments described in them.

Eliot Rosewater

Recently I've been writing my name and the date and place of purchase. Particularly if you're buying a book in a bookstore you rarely visit, such as one you find abroad, it's nice to write it in so that you can remember the history of it later on.

I only ever write on one if it's a book or purchase that holds some sentimental value – such as what Eliot described above. If it's a book bought from a remote or unknown store, or a book that has some special memory associated with it, then I'll write down the date and location of purchase. I love finding written names, notes and dates on old second-hand books found in charity shops or real book-stores, especially if the note is one signifying a gift from one lover to another; I can never help but wonder what happened to result in the book being given away.

PurpleBee

I write notes on my books all the time, I insist that they increase their market value but Chapters have decided otherwise, their loss!

coffee_cake

Never, never, never...

Shryke

Never. What's written in a book is what I want to read. I don't need to add scribbles to a work. (A university text I bought might be a different matter). I don't get labeling with your name and date. Isn't that a national school thing? It makes no sense to me.

PurpleBee

bluewolf wrote: »

Never, never, never...

what if it's a word you've gone to all the trouble of looking up, why not just stick it in the margin? what harm is it going to do?

coffee_cake

PurpleBee wrote: »

what if it's a word you've gone to all the trouble of looking up, why not just stick it in the margin? what harm is it going to do?

I don't look up words too often and if I do, I'll remember it.
Definitely not scribbling it in margins, aughhh
In my german textbook - sure. Maybe in some other textbooks.
In any other book - no.

Eliot Rosewater

bluewolf wrote: »

I don't look up words too often

Look who's the big smarty pants :P

sceptre

I don't. But if you do, that's cool. I frequently scribble something if I've bought a book for someone though.

Years ago, I went out with someone who was on the phone looking for a piece of paper to write a phone number and, when she failed to reach for one, just scribbled it on the inside of her copy of The Remains of the Day. Horrified I was. Horrified.

Zaph

I don't suffer from OCD, but seeing someone writing on a book provokes a feeling that I would say is as close to it as I'm ever likely to get. And don't get me started on people who bend back pages to mark where they've read to. I won't even borrow books from a library because I want to make sure that the copy of whatever I'm reading is in pristine condition.

Cavehill Red

Zaph wrote: »

I don't suffer from OCD, but seeing someone writing on a book provokes a feeling that I would say is as close to it as I'm ever likely to get. And don't get me started on people who bend back pages to mark where they've read to. I won't even borrow books from a library because I want to make sure that the copy of whatever I'm reading is in pristine condition.

Sounds a little OCD to me. I write on books, fold the corners, scribble in the margins, sometimes even add doodles. It's fascinating to dig out a book to check on something or just to read again, and see one's own thought processes in reaction to it from times past, I think. I've often checked something in a book, been distracted by my margin notes, and ended up reading the book in its entirety again in order to see if I think the same thing about it now.

Odysseus

Cheers for all the responses. I only use ink for Name, Month, Year, actually they are all in green ink; I used the same pen on all my books for over 10years. I only do this on books that I will keep my Shakespeare, various classics and all my psych books.

I write plenty of notes and underline all of these but only in pencil, I won't use ink for that. Also with all my underlineing I use a small rule so all the lines are straight, it draws the odd comment;)

I hate any other types of marks on books, dog eared pages etc

PurpleBee

I bought a second hand book last year, it was so old and sun-jaded that the pages were crumbling as I turned them. It really added to the reading experience. New books are too slick and modern smelling, why would you want to preserve that?

Red Hand

Reminds me of Myles na gCapaleen. Ignorant nouveau riche people buy the big house, have the big library full of new and unused books. They're never likely to have heard of any of the books, never mind having read them, so what do they do if a guest decides to leaf through them? No dog leaves, no books stops, the spines intact?

Enter Myles na gCapaleen's professional book handling service where books are "handled" for a certain fee per foot length of book shelf operated on. Certain sentences are underlined, notes placed on margins, book stops inserted (eg Gate Theatre ticket), spines bent back etc so that each book looks suitably "read". He expands on this and describes it better than I ever could.

He hit the nail on the head. And yeah, I've written on the margin of a book. But only on one book-The Best of Myles.;)

MagicMarker

I can't even remember the last time I held a pen, let alone write on a piece of paper.

miamee

It depends on the book, if it one I am likely to read again, I will probably write my name and the date on it alright. I have a friend who often buys me a book as a gift just if he sees something he thinks I will like. In the past he always wrote a note in front of the book so now I give it back and make him write in it if he has forgotten

I generally only buy books that I think are *worth* buying, otherwise I get them from the library or borrow/swap with friends. A terrible waste of trees otherwise

NaNaNa1

I hate writing in books - or even bending page corners. It drove me mad in school when we'd have to highlight passages/quotes and write notes in margins. Maybe that's just my want to be neat though.

kylith

My name, yes, but I don't write anything else.

I was recently reminded of what Lewis H. Lapham had to say about this topic in the editorial of the States of War edition of his relatively new magazine, Lapham's Quarterly. (It's a fantastic magazine, by the way. I couldn't recommend it any more highly.) I'm transcribing, here:

As a college student, I acquired the habit of reading with a pencil in my hand, and, in books that I've encountered more than once, I discover marginalia ten or forty years out of date, most of it amended or revised to match a change in attitude or plan. In a worn copy of Scott Firzgerald's The Great Gatsby, in what I take to be my handwriting at age nineteen, I find a series of exclamation points subsequently crossed out and accompanied by the remark, in my handwriting circa the age of thirty, "Too romantic." In a biography of Aaron Burr, I come across a note, "Too cynical," corrected at a later date and with a different pen, by the further note, "Maybe not."

This sums up precisely why I like to amend and annotate my favourite books with simple remarks. I've marked my favourite book, which is Walden, by Thoreau, each time I've read it (and I've read it about half a dozen times), and I now notice that, in only five or six years, which is the interim between my first and latest readings, my views have often greatly changed; what I once thought brilliant, repugnant or philosophically wise I now frequently find to be the opposite. A book is something personal, and our favourite books are some of the most personal things that we own. A few pencil marks to chart the progress of our own development in respect to our favourite books is harmless at worst and deeply insightful at best. Provided I grow old, I can't wait to some day sit down and sift through my favourite books one final time, each instance of marginalia perhaps prompting long forgotten memories; reminiscing over my previous views and outlooks and how they've (possibly) greatly changed; how romanticism has given way to cynicism, and so on. That thought, at least, is worth a few pencil marks.

snausages

No, writing on books is a sin.

Here's some book gore-porn. Not for the faint of heart: http://gawker.com/5935392/watch-lauren-conrad-rip-apart-books-to-the-sounds-of-soothing-guitar

You can almost hear the screams of anguish.

kylith

Have any of ye come across any of the various 'make crappy roses out of old books/rip up your old books and glue them to stuff/rip up old books and make the spines into bookmarks' tutorials online. They make me weep. No book deserves to have that sort of thing done to it, I could only consider it if the book was literally disintegrating in my hand.

Funglegunk

I did it for a while, and I like the idea mainly because I enjoy seeing inscriptions by my own relatives in books that are decades old.