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Originally Posted by Andrew H.
I have, but I found that writing in a spiral notebook is better. (Although I would sometimes highlight in the book).
The advantage of writing in a notebook is that you have all of the notes for a particular book in one place, and it's easier to look over your notes as a whole than to flip to various dog-eared places in the book.
Notebooks also give you more space to write than writing in the margin. Particularly the margin of a paperback.
A notebook also makes it easier to compare several books.
One of the issues with Adler's approach is that it works best when you are re-reading a book and thus have some specific idea about what you want to pay attention to. (Not doing that leads to the used books most people have encountered in college, where the previous reader highlighted every sentence).
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The only real advantage I could see to writing in the book itself is that if you reread it 20 years later, you can see what you thought of it 20 years ago. Which is not always an advantage.
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I think 20 years later might be a bit of hyperbole don't you ? One might want to look through the book, again, as soon as a week or a year later. Also, notebooks tend to be more transitory than books and ebooks and they take up more space than books and ebooks (not depth wise per se but in other aspects). So one might want to retype, the notes, in digital format which is a pain in the ass. Also, another advantage of having them in the book or ebook is that the notes won't become seperated and lost. Adler had this to say on the subject :
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Originally Posted by Mortimer J. Adler
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But, you may ask, why is writing necessary? Well, the physical act of writing, with your own hand, brings words and sentences more sharply before your mind and preserves them better in your memory. To set down your reaction to important words and sentences you have read, and the questions they have raised in your mind, is to preserve those reactions and sharpen those questions.
Even if you wrote on a scratch pad, and threw the paper away when you had finished writing, your grasp of the book would be surer. But you don't have to throw the paper away. The margins (top as bottom, and well as side), the end-papers, the very space between the lines, are all available. They aren't sacred. And, best of all, your marks and notes become an integral part of the book and stay there forever. You can pick up the book the following week or year, and there are all your points of agreement, disagreement, doubt, and inquiry. It's like resuming an interrupted conversation with the advantage of being able to pick up where you left off.
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http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/adler.html
Oh, well, *sigh* looks like I'm stuck using the notebook solution as proposed here.