Do You Write in Your Books?

Our friends at Book Riot have another cool ‘Reading Life’ feature up this week. Johann Thorsson writes about his new year’s ‘resolution’ to write in his books, as a way to engage in his reading more ‘actively.’ From the article:

“You see, my books are usually still in pristine condition after reading. I bend the spine as little as I can while reading, and I get dizzy just thinking about marking books, even with a pencil. But the idea of reading more actively has been swimming around in the back of my head recently, of somehow immersing myself more in the text. Of conversing with the writer, if you will.”

I wonder, how many people really do this? I never wrote in my books during my paper days, and the idea of ‘wrecking’ a paper book still seems like a bit of a blasphemy to me.

But I found to my surprise that I do enjoy ‘writing in’ my Kindle books, and it IS for the reason Thorsson gives—to engage more actively in my reading. I highlight liberally as I read, and this is what I look for:

1) Typos and PCR errors. I do re-read books, and have dreams of sharing them someday with the children in my life. I want any subsequent reads to be error-free, and when I finish a book, I go through and correct the mistakes. Perhaps this will turn out to be a waste of time; the Beloved is fond of pointing out to me that I have so many new books to read, I am unlikely to get to a re-read anytime soon. And, too, that the kids will likely have their own literary tastes. But still, I can’t leave an error-filled book in there to pollute my pristine Calibre library…

2) Quotes, ideas to remember and other keepable snippets. I highlight these and copy them into Evernote while I am on my computer fixing up the typos. Periodically, I go through my Evernote quotes file and re-read them all. Sometimes, I do a little pruning but usually I leave them there and keep them on file.

3) Areas of the book I may want to return to later. This is so useful for non-fiction books. Sometimes, there are summary charts or graphics or workhorse areas of the book which I would want to reference later. I recently read a book that had all sorts of writing prompts. I highlighted the ones I may want to try using. Next time I load the book via Kindle cloud, all the highlights will be there waiting for me. I can go straight to the part of the book I want to use.

I have to admit, it has enhanced my reading to have the highlighting option. But I would never have done it with paper books. eBooks have opened up this option for me! Do you write in your books?