I’ve been reading Marc Schuster’s blog post about writing in books with some interest. I can remember having my first click pencil for A Level English Literature so I could scribble neat notes in the margins of the books we were covering, occasionally underlining something significant so it was easy to find when flicking through.
He talks of people seeing books as sacred and although I would never now write in the margin of a book (as I have no need to) I would love to be published and find a copy of my novel in a second-hand book shop with the margin filled with notes on each page, giving a glimpse of the reader’s thoughts.
Like this:
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It’s something that is sadly lost in the world of e-books. Okay you can annotate them electronically but you’ll never be able to see other people’s comments. Also in historic books it is often the annotations that are the most important clues for researchers.
I think we have an arrogance about the way we store information now – and we think future generations will easily understand what we were like. But I think we’re in danger of leaving a very sterile view of who we were, which is such a shame.
There’s an analogy in the nuclear industry in that industry professionals are having to think up ways to label waste in a way that future generations will be able to understand: http://m.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1043694/warning-future-nuclear-waste
I love reading back what I thought years ago in a book and I LOVE buying books that have other people’s views written all throughout. It just makes me happy.
Finding a book with interesting comments is like being able to pick the brains of a complete stranger – it’s such a find. My first marginalia experience was reading an Enid Blyton boarding school-based book, where someone had kindly translated the conversation that took place in a French lesson. It wasn’t critical to the story, but I was thrilled to know what was going on!
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