The Book Tower

From Booking Through Thursday.

How many of us write notes in our books. Are you a Footprint Leaver or a Preservationist?

I was once a Footprint Leaver in a big way, a lot to do with the fact that I studied for an English degree. I made so many pencil notes in margins and did so much underlining that I progressed to sticking post-it notes in pages. It was just quicker than making scribbles. My books would all have yellow pieces of paper sticking out of them, often more than one on a page. I grew out of the habit when I finished my degree, and going back to reread some of the classics I often puzzled over why exactly I’d left a yellow sticker in a particular page. I began to unpeel them all, one by one.

Starting to attempt writing book reviews, I was drawn back to my stickers and note taking but I’ve so far resisted. I’ve attempted and sometimes failed to commit the page numbers of important passages to memory. It can go disastrously wrong, and I recently forgot the part of an 800 page novel that I desperately wanted to refer to. I spent a wasted hour flicking through it to find the part I’d lost. But the reason I don’t like notes in books, especially those written in pen or when a highlighter has been given full flow, is when I find them in other people’s books. There’s nothing more disheartening than buying a second hand book, getting it home and opening it to discover the student vandalism that has gone on inside it. And nothing is worse than other people’s notes. And worse still is bad student notes, where the notes made are not noteworthy, the highlights highlight nothing and the passages marked yes! are definite nos.

So if you make notes in books and give them away, make sure they’re good ones. Or better still make them in pencil and rub them out when you have finished. Or just don’t make them at all.