
Reading with a pencil - ingve
https://austinkleon.com/2018/08/30/reading-with-a-pencil/
======
themodelplumber
I like the reminder that this is a thing and it can/should be done.

I grew up reading my dad's leftover WWII non-fiction, in which he typically
corrected the authors with little gems like "NO!!! A6M2 Zero used 20mm cannon
and .303, NOT .50 cal. SLOPPY."

Since then I've realized that these scribblings can be useful for a variety of
things, like:

\- Things to remember for later: "Amazing quote." Then it's very easy to thumb
through and find that stuff later. For large tomes like scripture it can help
to use expanded notation schemes, like highlighters of various colors, symbols
representing topics, and so on. If you stick with "amazing quote" while
reading the NT or the Quran or something else for the first time, you will
quickly get lost when trying to find that one quote.

\- Frustrations, as above: "WHY is the author writing like this? This entire
chapter is fluff!"

\- Questions: "Who could have committed this crime???" Sometimes just getting
the information out of one's own head allows the question to settle in, or to
be reviewed and not forgotten later.

\- Things to research. I use a little icon like ->O for that, indicating
directional attention toward an object. For example, the book refers to
another book, or a website, and I want to follow up and learn about it.

\- Building a mental model / framework in order to leverage what the book is
saying: "This is step 1 of the author's model for identifying tropospheric
propagation conditions, and step 2 seems to be given on page 42."

Going beyond marginalia, I have also kept lots of book logs, where I reference
a page number and date and get my thoughts onto paper as I read. A log format
has its downsides, one of which is that it does not lend itself easily to the
expression and design of formal mental models _in one place_. So I usually
combine a log format with some other kind of presentational area in my notes
that is meant to unify and refine my concept of what can be leveraged, and by
which method(s).

Reviewing this before I press "add comment," I realize why I like paper books
so much...but I guess with e-books you can still keep a separate paper log.

Anyway thanks for posting!

~~~
pvg
Can, definitely, should is much less obvious. Not everyone's marginalia are as
interesting as Oliver Sacks's and there is much to be said for taking in a
work without someone else's constant running commentary. It turns books
essentially single-user.

~~~
cmiles74
I will agree that the notes of an author like Oliver Sacks or Mark Twain will
be more interesting to far more people than whatever I end up scribbling in
the margin. On the other hand, I don't think a person needs fame in order to
be important to other people: I would be willing to trade an awful lot to get
a copy of my father's favorite book, annotated with his personal thoughts
(it's Frank Herbert's "Dune").

~~~
pvg
Of course - your father's annotated copy of _Dune_ is understandably
interesting and valuable to you, more so than, I dunno, a copy Sting scribbled
all over while filming Lynch's _Dune_. But it still might not be the best way
to read it for the first time.

------
codingdave
> “Every piece of art I’ve ever made was because I saw bad and could do
> better, or saw great and needed to catch up.”

I know the context here isn't our tech product development cycles, but it sure
could be. Those are exactly the reasons I tend to get inspired to work on
something.

------
foreigner
Am I the only one who finds this appalling? I'm not a religious person but for
me paper books are sacred. I would _never_ mark in a book and am scandalised
when I see someone else do it.

~~~
ginko
Writing notes or underlining random sections feels like someone shouting
comments during a movie in a theater.

~~~
yoz-y
More like shouting comments at a TV alone in your room.

~~~
Engineering-MD
I think the analogy holds if you assume he means shared books, like in a
library.

------
mad44
Reading with a pencil, and active reading, and arguing with the paper is what
works for me for reading research papers.
[http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2013/07/how-i-read-
research...](http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2013/07/how-i-read-research-
paper.html)

~~~
bertr4nd
Thanks for that excellent write-up. I’m curious if you also read less
rigorously if, e.g., you’re breaking into a new sub area and need to rapidly
get up to speed on prior work.

(I’m curious because since I’ve transitioned from academia to industry I’ve
found it very difficult to give an extremely thorough treatment to anything
but the very most relevant papers. But I still think I’d benefit from keeping
up with research, especially as my engineering work takes me further afield
from my academic background.)

~~~
mad44
I sometimes read less rigorously to determine whether the paper deserves a
rigorous reading. However, I don't get much out of a casual reading. This may
be a quirk of my brain: maybe ADHD tendencies at play, or maybe I really need
to go slow and internalize the content.

I see some people can read quickly and get some benefit, but I don't really
envy them. I think going slow and struggling with the material teaches me
more. I am reminded of Haruki Murakami.

On his book "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running", he says roughly the
following. Gifted writers write without effort; everywhere they touch in the
ground the water pours. Other writers have to strive (he gives himself as an
example); they have to learn to dig wells to get to the water. But when the
water dries (inspiration leaves) for the gifted writer (which happens sooner
or later), he becomes stuck and clueless because he has not trained for this.
On the other hand, under the same situation, the other type of writer knows
how to keep going and succeed.

[http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2012/01/tell-me-about-
your-...](http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2012/01/tell-me-about-your-thought-
process-not.html)

So I am not too worried about my slowness :-)

------
cryoshon
i've done this for years now. it's a great way to maintain attention, single
out passages for later read-throughs, and note the weak points of the author
for the purposes of composing a response or synthesis understanding.

one practice that i have used to great effect is circling the names of other
authors and other texts which the piece that i'm reading mentions. then, if
it's relevant, i can later hunt down the other resources easily. you can do
some really cool exploration through certain intellectual movements that you'd
never otherwise encounter. using that method i've discovered a few of my
favorite authors (edward bernays, walter lippmann, etc).

notably, the book that goes into this practice and other scribblings in great
detail is the timeless classic, "how to read a book" by adler. there's an
entire section describing how to use marginalia to improve your understanding
and set the stage for syntopical reading wherein you gain the deepest level of
understanding and link-ins with outside information.

there's probably enough utility in pencil-reading to give an entire class on
it. i can't praise it enough.

------
malloryerik
This is the single biggest disadvantage with ebooks for me. I find myself
carrying a small notebook with my Kindle, but it's obviously not as good, and
digital note input is nearly useless.

~~~
cryoshon
about 10 years ago i had a sony brand e-reader that had a stylus which enabled
seamless underlining / writing on the margins. it's since been discontinued,
and i haven't ever found anything remotely comparable despite checking in on
it every other year or so. it's a real shame.

~~~
cle
I do this with an iPad, iBooks, and an Apple Pencil. Works great, and
GoodNotes is amazing for scribbling random thoughts and notes as well.

~~~
cryoshon
i understand that this is "the" way to do it these days, but it's way too
expensive. the old ereader was maybe $120, and did what i wanted to out of the
box and with stellar battery life.

------
nimbius
as an engine mechanic, I find this article horrifying for technical manuals in
a shop. If i need the clearances for ecotec engine valves, I dont want to see
some crayon-eating technicians doodles in the margins. I also dont want to see
some shade-tree greybeards corrections and musings about how "this is how it
was done back in my day."

This is why we keep notes at our workstations, not in our reference bookshelf.

~~~
icc97
I bow to your experience, but I can see how technical manuals similar to
recipe books could definitely benefit from notes that say "this did/didn't
work because...". If you've got rubbish colleagues, then yes you've got a
problem, but also you could have an excellent record from the old master that
just retired.

You could keep notes as separate pages in the book, but having the notes in
context does appear to have the potential to enhance a manual rather than ruin
it.

------
bloak
I don't think I've ever written in a book. So many of the books I read are
from libraries, or they're second-hand, perhaps very old, and I intend to pass
them on later, so I think of a book as a thing shared between many people who
might not want to see each other's notes.

Also, I've had to scan old books, when annotations were a nuisance.

Also, I've received books that previously belonged to the author and scanned
through them looking for corrections by the author, with a view to
incorporating them into a posthumous new edition. It is tedious to turn 300
pages looking for a correction that perhaps isn't there. Writing in a book is
an inefficient way of recording half a dozen notes or corrections relating to
a 300-page book. Writing those notes on a slip of paper inserted into the book
would be more efficient.

I write on print-outs, of course. When the notes are sparse I make a mark in
the corner of every page that I have written on so that I can quickly find
those pages again.

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
This is how one learns. You write to remember it now. Not later.

------
chewxy
I use post-it notes. My post-it notes underlines the sentence involved
generally.

Sometimes when re-reading books, I find old opinions or understandings that
are no longer correct or opinions I no longer hold.

The downside is that my books tend to get a bit thicker

------
gumby
Totally agree -- makes the book more of a dialog with myself. Looking at my
wife's notes in a book are interesting: her reading could be quite different
from mine.

OTOH my son came back at the beginning of his second year of high school and
announced "you are not allowed to correct my textbooks any more!"

------
greenyouse
Do others do a similar thing but with digital notes?

I used to take notes on books in notebooks and mark the page numbers. Over
time it switched to ebooks with TextEdit, then org-mode for writing thoughts
on books/talks. It's nice to break a book down by section or concepts and have
it all in one place as opposed to being scattered throughout random pages or
listed at the end of the book.

It's usually pretty easy to convert ebooks/pdfs to audiobooks or use a TTS
tool to read each page, one at a time. That makes it easier to write notes
while you're listening to the book. You can also get used to reading around
400 wpm, which is nice if you're a slow visual reader.

Since the comments aren't directly in the book, it's not as geared towards
English editing as marginalia is. It's great for summarizing technical
material though or learning new concepts!

~~~
confounded
Out of interest, how do you tend to structure the org-files? Do you enjoy
reading long-form text at a laptop/desk?

I’ve made a few attempts to do this (often with org-mode, pdf-tools, and
interleave-mode), but I’ve always gone back to printing and scribbling on
paper. It just feels more natural, but my notes end up being more ephemeral.

I’d like to be able to sync and search my notes very much, however! Any tips?

~~~
greenyouse
Sure, I usually set org files up by book/talk > chapter/concept > (any further
level of nesting)+. Here are a couple examples. From watching "Abstract" on
Netflix I did one entry for the show with a bunch of random notes because
there wasn't as much structure to the content. Most of my book notes more or
less follow the book > chapter > sub heading pattern. Tech talks usually have
a format like talk title > subject > details. I've stuck to using one file for
most of my notes the last few years. You should play around with it and see
what works best for you.

Reading with a desktop or laptop has been easier for me since it's more
familiar. I'm not really a fan of mobile phones or kindle readers. Evince or
fbreader work OK on linux. You could add espeak or another TTS tool for
speaking text. On OSX there's acrobat with voice over. Screen readers exist
but are harder to control. The tools for reading via TTS are pretty primitive
right now unfortunately.

I'm pretty bad at syncing notes... I've primarily done it with rsync over ssh.
If you save things back to a server and sync from there that could work.
Otherwise there's easier stuff like Google Drive or Dropbox.

------
branweb
Seeing other people's hand-annotations in books is fascinating--regular folks
even, not just eminent authors. Sort of a voyeuristic thrill maybe.

I stopped marking up my books for a while because it made me loathe to loan
them out. But now I've just stopped loaning them out.

------
wenc
I tried doing this but it slows down my reading, breaks the flow of the book
and makes reading a slog. How do folks overcome this problem?

I really want to do this because I think this type of critical reading of
books contributes to active learning.

~~~
burkaman
If you're really trying to actively learn, I think it's best to do multiple
passes. Read the book once and write some thoughts at the very end, and then
read through a second time while taking more detailed notes. Your notes will
probably be higher quality, as you can write "this confusing idea will be
explained in chapter 8" instead of "this idea is confusing".

------
Pamar
I believe that using Frixion[1] pens you can erase the ink (more precisely, it
becomes transparent) by applying heat to it. This is usually done by rubbing
the written area with the "eraser" at the top of the pen, but I think you can
do a bulk erase (before reselling/donating the book, for example) by placing
it in a microwave oven.

Anyone has done this/can provide feedback?

[1]
[https://www.nippon.com/en/features/c00520/](https://www.nippon.com/en/features/c00520/)

~~~
imurray
I love Frixion pens and use them every day when writing notes, and annotating
drafts. They're also great for writing under a document camera when teaching.
Although I wish there was an intermediate thickness between the thin ball-
points and the really fat felt-tips.

That said, I wouldn't use Frixion pens to write in books that I wasn't
prepared to write in using normal pens. The ink doesn't _completely_
disappear. The color also comes back (to some extent) if you put the paper in
a freezer.

------
dynamite-ready
People who do this to library and second hand books need a slap.

Has to be said.

