Annotations

>>7717395
You should probably annotate, but it's not that big a deal.
your friend is a moron

>>7717410
Yeah, he kind of is.
It made him angry (for some reason) that others would even dare to annotate. He said that it's a way of presenting something unnaturally different from the way it is unaltered. Though I told him that an unaltered text always exists and he went into some bout about pricing of used books or the prevalence of annotations in used copies.

I do it slightly, but only with paperbacks and on my kindle. I feel like I'm taking a class when I do it, though.

i do sometimes
i like reading something for the 4th time and seeing notes from a year ago, two years ago, three years ago... and seeing how my understanding of and responses to the book evolve

i also like to write my summative thoughts in the front/back pages because more often than not i'll forget the finer details of a novel in between the times i pick it up to read and to be able to refresh myself on my past understanding before starting over is often helpful. just simple things like themes i found most prominent or motifs strung throughout

nay
if you absolutely must do them do it with a pencil and with clear horizontal non cursive writing
if someone wants to read it after you, you make it a mess for him
the pic you posted is absolutely disgusting

>>7717395
>yay or nay
stopped reading
it's yea or nay
fucking plebian

>>7717434
Your friend's not wrong - annotation naturally destroys the original 'purity' of a 'pristine' work, which begins the moment a new reader receives it.

If you're studying the work, of course annotations will give you more out of it. They are the carved handrails, the rebar spikes on a particularly rough climbing trail, the man-made stone steps on a hike. You'll climb far faster with them, but they're not originally there.

Personally, I agree with your friend, because I look at it this way: "What can I cite to put in a paper?" You certainly can't cite your own annotations, but your annotations may make good points to bring up in a paper.

Personally I dislike writing on books in the first place - probably a hold-over from spending so much time in libraries. If you want to make notes, sticky-tabs and a personal notebook are your friends. I've always written the page number and paragraph before each of my notes, and that worked well through my English degree.

Only do it on mass produced paperbacks that you are pretty sure will have no historical value a century from now.

Nothing makes a librarian or rare book collector REEEEE more than obtaining a rare copy of an important work and seeing that some faggot has underlined random shit in blue pen or wrote some shitty commentary in the margins.

>>7717395
If I'm reading a book for the first time, I would prefer to have a blank copy, and make my own notes. Only on a second reading (or more) would I try another annotated copy.

It all depends on what type of museum-visitor you are.

Do you run up to the art, experience it, then read the little plaque and revisit it?

Or do you read the plaque, and try your best to understand what the artist intended?

>>7717474
Agreed. Worth noting, though - many a Master's Thesis has been inspired by some (say) 18th-century hack who added some expository comments to a near-lost work. So you just never know.

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>He reads a book that needs annotations in order to follow

>Kekkék!

seriously /lit/?

>>7717395
I've never found annotations helpful tbqh, even in study. If I need to work through some allegory or something like that, I usually read out loud.

>reading james joyce
fucking irredeemable

>>7717577
>disliking stylistic sponges
why?

I'm a social chameleon, i have no defining traits of my own and i fade into the wallpaper at parties

there's no one else i would rather read

>>7717520
>he doesn't read only books that need extensive notes to comprehend

>>7717624
what do you think is in there that you so badly need?
do you think some potato munching queer from 100 years ago really has any interesting elucidations on anything?
its just gibberish

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>>7717470
>yea or nay
what's your deal
it's "yeah" or "no dice, brother"
fucking narc square

>>7717470

plebeian*

>>7717624
The only notes in a book that are acceptable are footnotes, preferably as humourous as Pratchett's.

>>7717471
I suppose that I'm mostly in agreement with you in this post.
Though I still don't see the problem in "tainting" a work in a personal copy. Sure, interpretation will be clouded for one who reads that specific copy, but an unaltered (pure) version of the text always exists.
I view annotation as primarily an extension of one's thought-process. I'm in agreement with what you've said toward study of a book as well. Annotation on the page, to me, allows for direct tie-in of thoughts and interpretation that can't be done the same way with sticky-notes or on paper.
I mostly take notes on a separate piece of paper regardless. Though I do feel that annotation on the page, as an extension of thought, is certainly valuable in its own right.

So yeah, I guess I'm more indifferent than anything. I certainly, however, don't find annotations as reprehensible as my friend.

>>7717395
Well it's only normal to do it with philosophy, math, history and other non fiction books. Now to do it with fiction seems kinda stupid.

>>7717665
You read infinite jest yet?

>>7717742
Not yet. I'm slightly concerned about reading one of the meme three.

I love when I find some insights that someone else wrote into a book.
However, I think they should be pencil only. Pen is too permanent, and that's just inconsiderate.

>>7717687
Same anon:
>an unaltered (pure) version of the text always exists.
That's true, but is it _the copy you're currently using?_ That's really the biggest question, and if it isn't then you're up the river.

I do agree, I loved annotating a printed copy of poems in early undergrad.

>>7717750
I couldn't agree more with this post.

>>7717772
Yeah, I agree from an inconvenience standpoint. Though, if the text is readily available, it only seems an inconvenience to me. I feel one has the right to write all over their personal copy if they so choose–even if it is thoughtless scribblings.
If it is a communal copy I will wholeheartedly agree though.

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>>7717805
Always nice to find agreement on /lit/. Have a nice day, anon.

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I stole a copy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein from a girl I've been dating. Her annotations were complete shit and exposed that she had no understanding of context for the time of the book's publication.

That's really the first time annotations have ever bothered me. But, that's probably because I'm assuming that millions of other young girls are reading this work, believing it's some prolific, feminist triumph, and then reading it like it's some cheaply proscribed elementary pop-lit that you can just pick up any day of the week without having read preceding works or the historical context of such a book and just "get it".

>>7717815
I often think that someone is justified in projecting their own interpretations or meaning onto a book. It's a method of making sense of a novel in a way.
I suppose that I'm saying, to me, any interpretation is valid if it relates directly to the text. If someone finds meaning where another does not, then more power to them. That just comes across as the strength of fiction to me, however incredulous one's interpretations may seem.

>>7717847
Not if we're talking about understanding the purpose of the author's work. I think it's valid to find your own meaning, sure; but, if we're talking from a historian's perspective, or someone who wants the most concrete and logical interpretation of the text -- you need to know the context. I also believe knowing the context makes for a better interpretation in your own mind, and a more grounded understanding of the ideas.

If you read a work, knowing the author is struggling with suicide at the time, it may completely change the understanding of the books, and may allow you to see things you were completely oblivious to before, possibly when you were just reading from your parochial understanding of such a text. I think what you're describing enables people to put up blinders to some realities that they would rather not face, because they're hard truths to swallow, especially with certain prolific, iconic works.

>>7717847
And, in the same sense, you wouldn't just walk into a gym and just start heavy-lifting. You would injure yourself. You would obviously, if wise about it, ask someone for an interpretation of the forms (context) of each exercise, how they work (within the text) your body (the overarching idea), etc. And, along the way, discover for yourself what's reliable, what you see works best, and what you're inclined towards after experienced a BROAD basis of viewpoints on the matter. It's how you make the best progress in the shortest time. But, just picking up weights (books) one day, and doing something without a general understanding will not yield the best results. I take that same approach to literature.

>>7717875
>the purpose of the author's work

literally irrelevant, Historicism is dead, along with the author

Why would you ever write in a book

Fucking disgusting

>>7717875
I was speaking in a much more general regard. Obviously if you're working on an essay on an author's work you'd wanna look into their life and the context of the period in which it was written.
Though I retain that, in a casual reading, someone is justified in any interpretation they derive from the book–whether or not it focuses on context.

>>7717815

Can you offer some insight into what the understanding was that your lady friend lacked? Because I found Frankenstein really dated, shallow, and tedious to be honest. It refuses to engage with the moral questions it poses; maybe to some extent that's a product of its time but I don't feel like it's an excuse, not when shit like Don Quixote or Gargantua and Pantagruel had been written centuries before.

>>7717917

Yes, great, let's take this to a logical conclusion and imagine language doesn't exist. Think how exciting literature will be when it's just a collection of incomprehensible squiggles!

>>7717927
Same here 2bh senpai, absolute heathens.

>>7717395
One thing is annotating, but what's there on the image is horrible, that cuts the true purpose of the book for any reader.

If you are going to underline or add a footnote, fine, but never do as many scrambles as there is on >pic related , for any case make notes appart

>>7717748
They are ranked as follows:
1. Ulysses (best novel in English)
2. Infinite Jest (best novel of the past 30 years)
3. Gravity's Rainbow (still one of the best of all time)

I annotate my Physics and Maths textbooks but I don't think I ever have done so in others