We pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

- from "Marginalia" by Billy Collins

From the looks of a lot of home libraries I've been in, it would be presumptuous of me to start right in with "how to mark a book." I might as well start in with "how to destroy your garden." Most people would never mark a book. Most people teach their children not to color in books. (I think that coloring books are meant to wean us of this habit. They're a kind of nicotine patch for preschoolers.) Schoolchildren must lug around books all day and read them, but they must never mark in them. At the end of the school year, students are fined if the books have marks. So we have a nation that equates marking in books with sin and shame.

To most adults, I think, books are rarefied or holy, perhaps too holy to interact with. Books crouch on shelves like household gods, keeping ignorance at bay. A small library on a home's main floor may amount to a false front, a prop to give neighbors a certain impression of their host's intellectual life. Neighbors may get the idea that he holds a reservoir of learning that could pour out of his mouth at any twist of the conversation.

But the presence of a book may have nothing to do with its impact on its owner. A lot of people never really get mad at a book. Few people ever ever throw a book, kiss a book, cry over a book, or reread a page in a book more than once or twice, if that. Some people never use a dictionary to find out what a big word in a book means. As a species, people don't interact with books much.

I'm not suggesting that you mark every book you own, any more than I would suggest that my dog mark every tree he sniffs. But you should be free to mark up most books in the most worthwhile core of your collection. My dog has his favorites, and so should you.

Why mark in a book? I may retort, Why blaze a trail through a forest? I like hiking in forests, but I'm a tenderfoot, and if I'm going to blaze a trail, I want to do it only once per forest. Marking in a book is a great idea if you have a dreaming idea of picking the book up again someday.

It's funny how people and bookstores sell used books on Alibris.com and Amazon.com. The fewer the marks, the greater the price! This is backwards thinking, so take advantage of the bargains. People love the idea of a pristine forest, but wouldn't you compromise some of that pristine-ness for a well-marked trail if you wished to hike in that forest?

I mark my books for three reasons. First, I mark books to create trails. If it's a good book, I may be back again to see things I missed the first time. If I have to reestablish a trail, I may be wasting some of my time on that second reading. If my subsequent readings resemble my first, I may not get the full benefit of what only subsequent readings offer. Summaries, graphic organizers, highlighted text, and comments are good things to add to a book for this purpose.

Second, I mark my books to establish territory. (My dog and the trees again.) By the time I break in certain kinds of books, I've found out more about myself, perhaps, than about any facts or opinions the book offers. I collect quotes that support ideas that affect me. I put those quotes in my book's margins, and I refer to them in an index I sometimes have to create by hand. (Click here for an example of an index I put together for one of my core books.) In this marking process, the book becomes my territory. In fact, the book becomes part of me in some way.

Finally, I mark my books to learn to write. My improvement in writing involves close readings of writers I admire. If I like something I read, I want to know how the writer did it. There are patterns in the use of nouns, pronouns, verbs and other parts of speech; there are patterns in syntax and in sentence variation; and there are patterns in sound devices, such as alliteration and assonance. I mark these with different symbols or colors, and I connect these dots. Patterns emerge, and style emerges from patterns.

Click here for an outline that describes ways of marking books for each of these three purposes.

Here are some other resources for learning how to make a satisfying mess out of your books:

"How to Mark a Book," an essay by Mortimer J. Adler

"All Books are Coloring Books," a book review of The Art of Reading: a Handbook on Writing by Roger J. Ray and Ann Ray

- Peter

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