Francis Bacon once remarked, “some books are to be tasted, others
to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”
Reading and writing
often go hand in hand. Reading is not a passive skill but rather an
active one.
One of the ways we
chew and digest what we’re reading is to comment on something
someone else has written. We do this through Marginalia — the
broken fragments of thought that appear scribbled in the margins of
books. These fragments help us connect ideas, translate jargon, and
spur critical thinking. (One notable downside though, giving away
books becomes harder because often these fragments are intimate
arrows into my thinking.)
In the world of
ebooks, the future of marginalia and reading looks different. With
electronic reading devices, the ease of inserting these thought
fragments has diminished. I have Kindle and while I’m trying to use
it more, there are issues. By the time I’ve highlighted a section,
clicked on make a note, and labored intensively at the keyboard, I’ve
often lost the very thought I was trying to capture. (Ebooks,
however, make certain things easier, like searching.)
When you buy a book,
you establish a property right in it, just as you do in clothes or
furniture when you buy and pay for them. But the act of purchase is
actually only the prelude to possession in the case of a book. Full
ownership of a book only comes when you have made it a part of
yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it— which
comes to the same thing— is by writing in it.
Why is marking a
book indispensable to reading it? First, it keeps you awake— not
merely conscious, but wide awake. Second, reading, if it is active,
is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or
written. The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot
express it usually does not know what he thinks. Third, writing your
reactions down helps you to remember the thoughts of the author.
Reading a book
should be a conversation between you and the author. Presumably, he
knows more about the subject than you do; if not, you probably should
not be bothering with his book. But understanding is a two-way
operation; the learner has to question himself and question the
teacher. He even has to be willing to argue with the teacher, once he
understands what the teacher is saying. Marking a book is literally
an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author.
It is the highest respect you can pay him.