For many years now, I have been in the habit of writing in the books I read. I underline, italicize, make comments, disagree, draw hearts and asterisks, make small statements to the author, rebel, and so on. So if I find a book, a chapter, without any kind of marking, I am practically sure that I have not read them. I remember once when a colleague from a course I was taking looked at me horrified when I highlighted a text in blue in one of the volumes of Freud's work. For me, it was logical to proceed that way and, for some time now, I see that it makes more and more sense.

Recently, I bumped into a short text , which is adapted from an excerpt from the book How to read a book , by Mortimer Adler, which I discovered to be a true classic, originally published in 1940. The book teaches reading techniques for different books, as well as brings reading recommendations. The fact is that this excerpt, entitled "How to mark a book", talks about Two ways to own a book ; one is contained in the act of buying it, in the same way as buying a garment, which would be only the first action of owning a book.

The way to truly appropriate it is to make it part of yourself and the best way to do this would be precisely to write in the book. The author lists three reasons for marking our books: this act literally keeps us awake; Active reading is how thinking and thinking leads to words, spoken or written; Writing helps you remember both what you thought when reading and the author's own thoughts.

Curiously, days after I came across this short text, the tweet by Melissa Turkington , retweeted by someone I follow. In that tweet, Melissa says that she bought a used book by Charles Bukowski, the best part of which was the notes and comments made by the former owner. She posted several photos of the notes and the comments are really inspired and fun. The tweet went viral and, as the internet allows us wonders, it reached the author of the notes.

I thought this story was wonderful and discovered that the term "marginalia", which I had heard in other contexts, designates annotations made in the margin of a book or other document . And I was completely ignorant of this use. I also discovered that there is a whole universe around marginalia, such as books that arise from notes in another book, friends who share a reading by taking notes and reacting to each other's notes, exhibitions of annotated books by great writers, etc.

The fact that I used the expression "author of the notes" above is significant. It makes me think about the authorship of what is written when one reacts to the thoughts, to the words of the writer. I've always enjoyed seeing people's handwriting. Borrowing a book and finding the owner's comments and reactions was always a bonus. I believe that there is something very intimate about marginalia, in what is on the margins. There is something not only in the content of what is written, but in the way it is written, in the handwriting, in the small drawings, in the trace that remains of those who passed by, in the trace that the reader leaves there, in the mark that remains and makes history.

The subject fascinates me and makes me think, for example, of How is the marginalia in times of Kindle and tablets . But that's for another post. For now, I'm still here, reading with the highlighter, the mechanical pencil and the post-its at hand, leaving my mark, locating myself in the text, making it a little bit my own.