A Rant...

[Bikewer]

On the subhuman dolts who feel obliged to annotate, underline, highlight, and insert pithy thoughts in public library books.

Invariably, these idiots are trying to display thier intellectual prowess to all subsequent readers, or so one surmises. Buy your own damn copy!

 

[specious_reasons]

Ugh! People do that?

It's not like buying a used book, where such things shouldn't surprise you.

 

[TruthSeeker]

yes, people do it all the time AND it is very irritating.

Most bothersome is borrowing books from the university library and finding illustrations torn out, graphs plotted over the original (a test of the reader's versus the author's data perhaps?) and markings indicating which paragraphs will be lifted for an essay...

 

[Mr Manifesto]

It's women who do it, I tell you! I've caught three people in the act, and they were women every time! What more proof do you need- It's time for the kangaroo court to convene.

What cracks me up is reading a book where the highlighting stops after a dozen pages.

 

[JesFine]

This is indeed unfortunate. I recently checked out Animal Farm and saw "I think he is lying" written in the margins when it was abundantly clear that "he" was in fact lying. Not sure why this <s>person</s> woman* felt the need to write it down though.

There were other insightful notes too like "This sounds like communism" and "Boxer is strong but dumb".







* see research by Mr. Manifesto

 

[TruthSeeker]

I confess to getting a certain delight from reading other WOMEN's (see research above. I can't figure out how to strike out letters) stupid comments in margins.

One favorite was reading a book on parallels in Buddhism and Christianity (title escapes me this second) and everytime Buddhism was described, a WOMAN had inserted "There is only one way to the Father"

 

[Bikewer]

Then there's the folks that insert pages from religious tracts into books....


BTW, I just got Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate (the modern denial of human nature)

Good stuff so far! I'll post a review when I finish.

 

[HarryKeogh]

What cracks me up is reading a book where the highlighting stops after a dozen pages.

you've just described every used copy of plato's the republic. (yeah, i stole that joke from the onion)

 

[Mr Manifesto]

you've just described every used copy of plato's the republic. (yeah, i stole that joke from the onion)

It's a noble tradition.

 

[volant]

While looking at a copy of one of Randi's books, I think Flim Flam, I saw some woman had wrote in: "loser," "moron," "unbeliever," etc. I also noticed she had made giant X's across the pages, woo woo's, how I love them.

 

[Mocker Wall]

I think I remember hearing about a similiar problem in the Library of Congress. People are actually cutting illustrations out of books that are over 200 years old! That kind of thing pisses me off!

 

[Doubt]

Philosopher Mortimer J. Adler said that we should read with a pencil. But not a
library book.

http://radicalacademy.com/adlermarkabook.htm

You know you have to read "between the lines" to get the most out of anything. I want to persuade you to do something equally important in the course of your reading. I want to persuade you to write between the lines. Unless you do, you are not likely to do the most efficient kind of reading.

I contend, quite bluntly, that marking up a book is not an act mutilation but of love. You shouldn't mark up a book which isn't yours.

Darn good essay. But I certainly have not marked up most of my books, since I am usually eating and reading at the same time.

 

[Skeptic]

Philosopher Mortimer J. Adler said that we should read with a pencil. But not a
library book.

http://radicalacademy.com/adlermarkabook.htm

Darn good essay. But I certainly have not marked up most of my books, since I am usually eating and reading at the same time.

Adler wrote an entire book titled "How to Read a Book". A bit old-fashined, but it should be REQUIRED READING for all serious readers, together with Clifton Friedman's "The Life Reading Plan". I didn't really know how to read until I read that book, and I didn't know what to read until I read Friedman.

More precisely, I STILL don't know how to read, but I have some idea that there is a lot more to reading than I previously imagined; and, while of course I knew of the tons of great books that exists, I didn't really have any sense of order or progression in them before I read Friedman, but read them willy-nilly, whatever was most available.

Before I've read Adler, I simply believed that the way I read naturally was real reading; before I've read Friedman, I believed reading any old "classic" in any order would do. That is about as accurate, I now realize, as saying that I am a chessplayer just because I learned to move the pieces legally. Technically correct, but...

Not many books give you an idea that there is a whole world out there that you've missed out on, because you were simply unaware of its existence. Those two books--Adler's especially--do.

 

[iSani]

I find that reading a book somebody else has made markings on is like trying to watch a movie while people behind you talk about what's happening in that movie. In other words, being distractd by somebody else's thought processes while trying absorb yourself in the material. Highly annoying.

Also, the annotations in library books can get comical at times. Recently I checked out a book on linguistics that was chock full of facts - so practically every other sentence was underlined. Sometimes even entire paragraphs would be underlined. Sort of defeats the purpose.

 

[gjones2]

Marking books

I find that reading a book somebody else has made markings on is like trying to watch a movie while people behind you talk about what's happening in that movie.

Good comparison. I've been annoyed by both myself, so I resist the impulse to make such comments. I can understand the temptation, though. It's difficult to hear or read some claims without wanting to respond. One of the good things about internet forums is that you're not just a passive observer. You get a chance to talk back, then and there, and with a pretty good chance that what you say will be heard.

As for the books that I myself own, I confess that many of them do have pencil marks (just light ones in the margin). I don't consider most of what I read to be worthy of further thought, but it's useful to mark the five percent (one percent in some cases) that appears to be worth returning to later. Usually I mark passages because I believe they're insightful and well expressed. Occasionally I mark them for the opposite reason -- because they're egregious examples of something. Either way going back later and giving extra thought to what I've marked fixes it in my mind better than mere reading. Then too the marked passages may carry added meaning once I can see them in the context of the whole book.

 

[bignickel]

Probably the worst activity I've heard about are the people who go to libraries and comb thru books looking for pages that they can excise with a razor blade. The worst kind of anti-intellectual fascist.

I myself haven't come across their work, probably because any book that they would do that to, that I would read, I have already bought from a store, because I would want to refer to it on a some-what irregular basis.

I've also heard that in in some court cases, books from Scientology have been entered into evidence; books that would normally cost thousands of dollars to glean their (both bizarre AND banal) contents. So, of course, they are available for perusal by the public. So what happens? A group of scientologists always makes sure that one of their own keeps the book checked out; when it's time to be returned, he returns it with another scientologist who immediately checks it out.

I heard that that was on in 90s; of course, now with the Internet, most of that stuff has made it online (which means their lawyers have been extra busy trying to cut the heads off of the information hydra).

 

[roger]

I think I remember hearing about a similiar problem in the Library of Congress. People are actually cutting illustrations out of books that are over 200 years old! That kind of thing pisses me off!

Yes, we used to have open access to the stacks, but they had to stop it because of the number of very rare books being vandelized that way. So now researchers are very encumbered (there's a LOT of stuff in that library that is not indexed, so you've gotta order shelves at a time, which they deliver to you in boxes. I'm not kidding).

 

[JesFine]

Adler wrote an entire book titled "How to Read a Book".

On a hunch, I checked this book out of the library the other day. You guessed it.... somebody completely marked it up.

 

[JamesM]

I like it when <strike>people</strike> women underline passages in books. It does make me wonder what it was that made that bit so important to <strike>someone</strike> a woman.

I also like it when people put question marks next to paragraphs, but only if I understand the paragraph. Then I feel all superior.

 

[Cleopatra]

I belong to the neurotics that keep their books in a way that make you believe that none has ever touched them.

Do you remember that woman in Elia's Canneti book,"Die Blendung" Therese(?) which touched the hero's books only if she had wore gloves in order to impress him? I take notes of the books I read but on tiny notebooks. Each book has its own notebook.Yes, I have already told my therapist about that!

Allow me to defend though what other people do to books

There is a magic in books that have passed through many hands because they make the way to the multiple readings more accessible.

You read the book with your eyes and with the eyes of the stranger who underlined passages. So there it is! The three of you:

The author, you and the stranger "vandal" "discussing" about the same book

Of course I understand that it's kind of egocentric to treat public books that way. This is the reason why I never read novels if they don't belong to me.

Canetti's hero,Peter Klein, says the proverbial about the books from public libraries( I remind you that his private library counts to up to 40.000 titles!)

" Books from public libraries are like prostitutes.If you are observant you can even smell on them the person who touched them just before you. Very annoying! "