Simple Poll- Do your mark (annotate) your books?

[1611mac]

A very simple poll...
Do you mark (annotate) your ebooks as you read?
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[elcreative]

I get books to read them not scribble on them...

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by elcreative

I get books to read them not scribble on them...

Quoted for truth.

[Justy]

I was raised that books were for reading and you mark the pages with a bookmark. Any notes about the book should be put into a notebook or on notepaper that could be put into the book. My parents would even frown on bending over the corners to mark pages and made sure we knew how to read a book without breaking the spine. Most of the books I own have been read many times and still look almost new.

[chrisanthropic]

That's one of the things I find very nice about ebooks - I can mark them without damaging them. I can highlight passages I like or want to return to. I can keep track of running themes or character traits and words I want to steal for my own vocabulary.

Paper books? Never.

[ATDrake]

Only if they've got lots of typos.

But seriously, I use bookmarks for paper books, but only to mark where I'm currently reading.

If I want to make actual notes, that's why Post-It notes were invented, and I have a stack of the kind with the lines. I would not write or highlight inside an actual paper book, because I like mine to stay reasonably pristine, and also, resale value considerations.

E-books get marked up more frequently, but according to the same pattern.

I'm much more likely to mark/highlight a funny/meaningful/informative passage I might want to get back to later, since you can't really flip through e-books the same way and sometimes the search function is unhelpful if you don't remember exact phrasing.

But I still mainly mark up e-books for future typo-fixing.

[RainingLemur]

Hard copies of books? Never. Sometimes I'll keep a small piece of paper in the book as a book-mark that has some small notes on it, but I wont mark the book at all.

With ebooks, I'll toss the occasional note onto certain things that I find especially great in what I read. It doesn't happen very often, but it has been known to happen.

[Filark]

It depends on what I'm reading and why I'm reading it.

Most of the time I read novels for fun. I look up words as I go but rarely mark the text. Sometimes I read works in progress, which I mark up extensively. With my newest ereader I can attach web links and (separate) typewritten notes to passages in the text, which is nifty.

Mostly I get lost in book-world and just turn pages!

Interesting question -- this might be one of those areas where ereaders are changing people's reading habits. Or not: I marked up paper books for study, but never when reading for pleasure. Hmmm. Not so much change after all!!

[queentess]

Originally Posted by chrisanthropic

That's one of the things I find very nice about ebooks - I can mark them without damaging them.

Originally Posted by RainingLemur

Hard copies of books? Never.

With ebooks, I'll toss the occasional note onto certain things that I find especially great in what I read.

What they said. I never ever ever notated in pbooks. In my ebooks I highlight fun quotes, passages I want to talk about later in reviews (either good or bad), things that seem like foreshadowing that I want to read again later, and words I don't know (which I later compile with the definition and sentence into a notebook that I started with my grandmother when I was about 12).

[DixieGal]

You guys sure do have a lot of rules about marking your books. It's just paper.

I used to look for well annoted textbooks when I bought them used. It saved me lots of time!

[1611mac]

hummm interesting.... I'm somewhat new here and I thought the focus of the forums was eBooks..... not paper????? (I was really referring to eBooks)

Also... some of us (well, at least me) have large reference libraries and reference books with are not worth much if key points and locations are not highlighted, marked, and noted for quick reference.

btw... concerning paper books... I have a certain well marked-up and "scribbled on" book which I wouldn't trade for 1000 new books!

[Billi]

Originally Posted by Justy

I was raised that books were for reading and you mark the pages with a bookmark. Any notes about the book should be put into a notebook or on notepaper that could be put into the book. My parents would even frown on bending over the corners to mark pages and made sure we knew how to read a book without breaking the spine. Most of the books I own have been read many times and still look almost new.

That's 100 per cent me. Books have always been something holy to me and I treat them with greatest care. And it took me a very long time to realise that ebooks are totally different, that I could write notes into a book and still have a perfect "clean" copy of the file. But I still use it only for books I read for study, I haven't made any annotations yet into the file of a fiction book.

[DiapDealer]

I mark up ebooks and pbooks alike. With pbooks, the only things I treated as sacred were the words they contained. The paper on which those words were printed never inspired me in the least.

I consider it one of the great advantages of my Sony that I can highlight text and make notes, and this is one of the reasons my first choice for format of any book is an ebook. I never mark up paper books.

[DixieGal]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I mark up ebooks and pbooks alike. With pbooks, the only things I treated as sacred were the words they contained. The paper on which those words were printed never inspired me in the least.

Me too. I was always last on the office book rotation, because no one wanted it after I finished mangling it. I would split them down the spine into manageable bits of about 150 pages more or less. Dogear and usually they got wet somehow. Then put it back together with a rubber band. Needless to say, I was seldom loaned a book!