On reading library & electronic books

Megaeraa

Ok. I have a simple-minded question for you folks. How to you handle thoroughly reading substantive books that you can't mark up because they're either library or electronic? For context, I'm one of those who underlines and writes in the margins.

Thanks for your thoughts.

-- Meg

Mr. Pessimistic

I take notes on index cards or small legal type pads. I will jot down notes or actually copy lines to use as quotes to support my thoughts. I note the page number to help me refer back to the book if need be. It is time consuming, but it works for me. I like the index cards, but it is a pain having a ton of them around.

I WANT an electronic pen scanner, which I am saving up for. Scrumfish had mentioned this a while back and ever since I have had my eye on one. They cost at least $100, so...

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

marti1900

I read electronic books mostly now, and open a wordpad file for each book, then cut and paste relevant stuff, jot my thoughts, and if I am reading additional material on the subject, cut and paste from that source too into the wordpad.

I have never written in books, or highlighted them. I have this inbuilt horror of defacing a book. However, I am not adverse to using them to prop up a chair or a corner of the bed, etc. Go figure.

When I read physical books (as opposed to electronic online books) on which I want to take notes, I buy a small notebook, and dedicate that notebook to the book in question, also including notes from other sources. I hate fooling around with a bunch of index cards. Too cumbersome.

Marti in Mexico

Mr. Pessimistic

I never write in books either...I feel like you Marti.

I started recently using the small legal pads for each book. That is working well.

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

Megaeraa

Hmm. Never thought of dedicating a small pad to a book. I'll try that. Index cards wouldn't work, since I carry my stuff around as I walk. Compact and light are important.

I use a similar approach to yours, Marti, for recording problem solving at work, but it had never occurred to me to apply it to my reading. Perhaps that's partly because spending my days in front of a computer leaves me unwilling to read from one in my spare time.

I've been a fan of Mortimer Adler's approach in How to Read a Book, which involves heavy markup, though I've never taken it to the extent he advocates.

-- Meg

Chris OConnor

I'm usually uncomfy marking up books too, but sometimes I break my little rule and take some notes in the margins. When I am reading a BookTalk selection I usually have a pad of paper out and take brief notes on it.

Chris

MadArchitect

I'm another one of those people who doesn't make notes in the books themselves, and I'm always a little confounded by the library books that have been thoroughly worked over with pen and pencil. I keep a rather elaborate reading notebook for my own purposes, which is useful not only in terms of keeping my books relatively clean, but it also allows me to keep all of my notes together rather than spread out over the space of a bookshelf or two.

Megaeraa

MadArchitect -- Would you elaborate a little on your elaborate reading notebook?

-- Meg

Megaeraa

Marti --

I was wondering -- in your wordpad files, how do you keep track of the point in the source doc your citation or comments pertain to? In many cases one could link it to, say, Chapter xx. But in some, like Paine's book, the finest built-in granularity for most of it is Part 1 vs. part 2. Do you link it to words? As in this comment pertains to words 12,322 - 12,445?

-- Meg

marti1900

Nah, I'm not that intellectual, nor do I care all that much about the minutia. I am not arming for a grand debate, just want to remind myself of something I've read, a quotable line, a point of interest. I just note the page number. If I wanted to be more scholastic about it all, I would open 2 or more notebook files, so I could organize better. I prefer the notebook to the block of notes, because in notebook you can change fonts which helps for organizing. Main book in one font, side sources in other fonts, your own comments in yet another font.

I often read something else on the same topic concurrently with the main book, so I put in references from the other sources as well. Sometimes I get more interested in the side reading and abandon the main book.

I read because I love reading and having a new idea or two whack me over the head once in a while. I almost never refer back to my notes, I think the act of making the note helps to glue the idea to my brain. Sometimes I remember almost nothing of a book, nor can I give either a synopsis or a main idea. That tells me the book did not speak to me, and I just move on.

Reading is for pleasure and for recreation. For me, making it like a college course robs it of a lot of the pleasure, and sure takes the recreation aspect right out of it! LOL

Marti in Mexico

Ken Hemingway

Anyone who writes in or marks books is the spawn of the devil and destined to burn in hell for all eternity.

Loricat

Hmm...

Me?
No notes in books, not since university. Not since reading Woody Allen's short story "The Whore of Mensa": "She was every dame you saw waiting in line at the Elgin or the Thalia, or penciling the words 'Yes, very true' in the margin of some book on Kant."

On (gasp!) getting rid of books: I sometimes sell them to bookstores...stores here that pay cash (instead of store credit) usually pay 50% of what they can sell them for. Or, there's always Bookcrossing.

Lori

"All beings are the owners of their deeds, the heirs to their deeds."

MadArchitect

Agh! The bane of my existence is buying used books of checking books out of the library to find them filled with trite marginal notation. If you must write in the margins of your book, please, for the benefit of anyone else who might attempt to read that copy, refrain from writing things like "yes, very true". What's the point? Are you going to forget that it's true the next time you read that passage? Make it interesting; throw in some bold conjectures.

For that matter, be judicious with highlighting and underlining. I recently read a copy of Aldous Huxley's "Doors of Perception" in which some previous owner had underlined, no lie, 90% of the text. They may very well have been on mescaline at the time.


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