Alex WellersteinVerified account

As the son of two librarians, one of the largest obstacles in my graduate studies, surprisingly, was learning it was necessary and okay to "deface" my books (i.e. underline, write notes in the margins, etc.). Just last month, I finally overcame my discomfort with highlighting.

My book-marking strategy is as follows: 1. always pencil (so I can always erase if I need to, which USUALLY is not about giving the book away but scanning it to assign to undergrads these days!)

2. I rarely mark the actual text itself. I put a little line in the outer margin next to passages that I might want someday. For things that I could imagine quoting, I draw a star. This makes it so I can flip through a book quickly and find important parts.

3. Last but not least: if I am reviewing a book, I write a short sentence summary of the chapter and my thoughts on it in the whitespace at the end of the chapter. This makes it very easy, when I am done, to quickly get a view from above. All of this is for what it is worth!

I do this as well (placing a star so I can find it easily). I've found that I only highlight passages that are really quotable. Otherwise, I just underline in pencil. The sentence summary is a great idea. I'm going to start doing that. Thanks for giving me all your strategies!

The problem I have with students and marginalia is not so much that I am embarrassed or anything (though me of 15 years ago sometimes wrote dumb things), but because I want them to write their own marginalia, have their own dumb thoughts, and not be burdened by mine! :-)