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Do You Mark Your Books?


Brian.

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Anyone who has ever seen my dwindling book collection will tell you that they look as good as new. However, today I bought a copy of Crime and Punishment with the sole intention of highlighting and writing notes in it. I’m feeling uneasy about this as I’ve always treated my books with great care but I want to try and engage a bit deeper with this book. In my defence, I do have a lovely Folio Society edition of it which will remain pristine but it still feels a bit off.

 

Do any of you mark your books, fold the corners etc? 

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9 minutes ago, Brian. said:

Anyone who has ever seen my dwindling book collection will tell you that they look as good as new. However, today I bought a copy of Crime and Punishment with the sole intention of highlighting and writing notes in it. I’m feeling uneasy about this as I’ve always treated my books with great care but I want to try and engage a bit deeper with this book. In my defence, I do have a lovely Folio Society edition of it which will remain pristine but it still feels a bit off.

 

Do any of you mark your books, fold the corners etc? 


I say : it's your book and you're free to do as you wish.

 

I don't mark my books, very probably because my mother discouraged me from writing in books when I was a child - we still have some books that I scribbled in and I can see her point. That said, I did fold down the corners as a child to mark my place, not now. My father uses day-glow highlighters in his self help books, which I find distasteful, not least because we donate a lot of books to charity and these ones can't be, which I think is the waste of a book. He says that he's using the book (but then invariably throws them out). My brother, on the other hand, thinks that my habit of breaking the spine so that I can read the book is book murder. So, each to their own. 
 

I think that everyone should explore all the options open to them in order to enjoy their reading and enjoyment is the most important thing.
 

 

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1 hour ago, Brian. said:

 

Anyone who has ever seen my dwindling book collection will tell you that they look as good as new. However, today I bought a copy of Crime and Punishment with the sole intention of highlighting and writing notes in it. I’m feeling uneasy about this as I’ve always treated my books with great care but I want to try and engage a bit deeper with this book. In my defence, I do have a lovely Folio Society edition of it which will remain pristine but it still feels a bit off.

 

Do any of you mark your books, fold the corners etc? 

 

 

I very occasionally underline something I might want to quote or find again easily in red, but that is very occasionally indeed.  I otherwise try to keep books in pristine condition, where possible.

 

53 minutes ago, lunababymoonchild said:


My brother, on the other hand, thinks that my habit of breaking the spine so that I can read the book is book murder. So, each to their own. 
 

 

I'm with your brother on this one, and I'll add a Gollumesque Murderer! for emphasis!

 

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Nooooooooo!  I don't even like it when the spine gets a bit creased.  I remember once reading that Michael Palin loves buying a new book so that he can crack it's spine, almost put me off him.  Each to their own of course.  Seriously if the spine does look as though the book has been read that's fine, I don't mark them otherwise though, if there's something memorable I try to remember the page number but would never write in a book.

 

Having said that, when I was young I did try to turn my books into a private library, and cut out little bits of card which I then stuck on the inside front cover so that a little bit of paper with the lendee's name on could be inserted.  It didn't last for long of course, as I didn't really loan the books out much in the first place!:rolleyes:

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Yes I do - I never write in them but I turn down corners if I don't have something to use as a bookmark, I do break spines (I read and knit so like the book to lie flat in front of me) and I read in the bath so the page edges can get a bit damp even though I have a towl to hand to dry my fingers before turning.

 

That said, if anyone lends me a book I treat it like gold-dust and return it in the state it was lent to me.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I don't mark any of my fiction books, and I hate folded down corners! I do write in text books though. My botany books have all kinds of notes in them, and I highlight the names of the plants I've found. My books on writing are also covered in notes - all in pencil. I also make notes in recipe books. 

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  • 2 months later...

Yep, I fold the corners of my books to mark my place all the time (I find book marks always fall out). I also write in my books all the time - more often it is in non-fiction books when I have my own thoughts on what the author has written. I will often write my own comments on the margins or underline certain phrases. Some of my more wieldy books have post-it notes in certain pages which I wish to mark and return to at a later stage.

 

I guess one reason I have always done this is because I don't really sell my books to charity shops/donate to libraries when I'm done with them as I prefer to keep them in my bookshelf, so it doesn't matter how much I spoil them. I also like the idea of my book being loved and used. :P 

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5 hours ago, lunababymoonchild said:

I use book bands like this

Oooh they really are lovely!

 

6 hours ago, Angury said:

Some of my more wieldy books have post-it notes in certain pages which I wish to mark and return to at a later stage.

I do this to everything I want to make a note on. I have a lot of post it notes. Lengthier notes get a whole square one, so I can write on it properly, while points that I just want to remember or go back to get a little arrow note. Really interesting books end up like spiky post-it hedgehogs :lol:.

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I was brough up to respect books too much,probably, so I never,ever mark them, bend corners or write in them! A bookmark for me is often a slip of scrap paper or a shop reciept,just slipped between the current pages. I actually own a few 'real' bookmarks that have been given to me over time,and i generally forget where I have them, or can't be bothered to look, so long as i have a slip of paper handy!

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It depends on the book, and my reason for reading it.

Studying, I may make light pencil marks in books I plan on keeping, but usually use notebooks or post it notes. For pleasure, I rarely make any marks, and use a bookmark or make mental note of my page. 

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  • 1 year later...

I have never, and will never, annotate books. There are a few booktubers who I either watch, or have watched in the past, who annotate them to an extreme and  I find it quite horrifying to watch. They highlight passages, underline sentences, write comments in the margins and although I am very much a case of ‘each to their own’ and ‘you do you’ I could never actually do it myself. It seems sacrilegious to me.

 

On 7/22/2021 at 6:42 PM, Hayley said:

...while points that I just want to remember or go back to get a little arrow note. Really interesting books end up like spiky post-it hedgehogs :lol:.

 

In my opinion this is a much more acceptable way of doing it.

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30 minutes ago, Madeleine said:

I cant even bear it if the spine gets creased!

 

I'm the same in many ways, although I am not quite as obsessed with this as I used to be. These days I don't mind general wear and tear on books, including broken or creased spines, but I wouldn't deliberately break the spine or damage the pages on purpose.

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I have never folded down corners of pages or marked a book in any way! I was brought up in a reading household where both my parents were avid readers, I was taught to respect books. The only exception to this being, I may have written my name on the flyleaf of a few prized books,as a child, to denote my proud ownership of them!

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Oh yes I used to have a fantasy library and stuck little bits of card inside them, like libraries did in  the old days where you had a little sort of ticket that went into a cardboard folder on the inside cover!  Luckily I soon got bored with that idea.:hide: so please don't judge me for being a book vandal!

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7 hours ago, Madeleine said:

Oh yes I used to have a fantasy library and stuck little bits of card inside them, like libraries did in  the old days where you had a little sort of ticket that went into a cardboard folder on the inside cover!  Luckily I soon got bored with that idea.:hide: so please don't judge me for being a book vandal!

Oh I played this game too but I used pen directly on the inside cover! I was clearly much more of a vandal as a child :lol:

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Yep I used to write my name and sometimes address on the inside cover too, we were such delinquents weren't we, although I suppose if it's your own property it doesn't really sound so bad.  And we were young and knew no better....!

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