The wonderful Lokesh, who sends me article links sometimes and who I wish had a blog (hint, hint), sent me a link to a a fun article in the New York Times Magazine, What I Really Want Is Someone Rolling Around in the Text. Perhaps you have seen it? It is about marginalia and observes that there seems to be a lot of buzz about the topic of late.
I think part of the buzz stems from the worry about the disappearance of marginalia with e-books. Sure, you can highlight and make notes on your own e-books, but you will never, ever buy an e-book and discover someone else’s marginalia in it.
Sam Anderson, the author of the article, is an avowed marginaliaist (yes, I made that up!). He is so enthusiastic that I found myself, someone who had the command, “never write in a book!” drilled into her head since she knew what a book was, wanting to pick up a pencil and start scribbling in the margin.
But lest you think the article is simply sounding the alarm on the disappearance of marginalia, it is much more than that. Anderson sees marginalia as a bridge between the private and the social reading life. He had an epiphany about what social reading in the future could look like, a future in which you could see all the marginal notes of your friends from, say, Infinite Jest, appear in your copy of the book where you could not only comment on the text of the book, but on the marginal commentary as well. Sounds cool, doesn’t it?
And then I thought, wait a minute! Kindle has a feature that lets you publish your notes and also lets you see the notes of other people who have read the book. You can’t limit it to only the notes of your friends, but maybe it will get there eventually. Anderson does mention this feature and he adds an interesting wishful twist: the possibility of subscribing to your favorite critic’s marginalia or to have the marginalia of past authors like Blake, Coleridge, Emerson, etc, appear in the book you are reading (assuming those authors had read and annotated said book of course). How nifty would that be?
I hadn’t been to Kindle’s marginalia site in awhile so I popped over to discover that they now have a feature where you can follow the notes of other people. If you have a Kindle and you make your notes public, let me know so I can follow you! I have some public notes anyone can see for my Kindle. I am rather disappointed to discover that books I didn’t download from Amazon don’t appear here. I had some good notes for Turn of the Screw and they are nowhere to be found. So the system isn’t perfect, but it is something that could prove to be interesting.
I still haven’t really used my Kindle enough to figure out how to post notes and stuff. I’m glad there is a way to share though. I don’t think it’ll quite compare with the real thing as I love to see a person’s handwriting but at least it’s something.
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You beat me to the punch. I thought Anderson’s essay was absolutely the best. And I made so many marks in the margins that his article is mostly obscured.
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Great post. I am always hearing positive things about the kindle and this seems to be yet another. I may have to treat myself! 🙂
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A great feature if it’s only text that you want to share. But one thing about marginalia is, they could be an art form, as described by Sam Anderson in his NYT article. The visual representations, symbols, drawing of lines, arrows, personal shorthands, different colors to denote various thoughts, the circling, underlining, cross referencing, handwritten and hand-drawn artistic expressions denoting personal thoughts. Those cannot be captured.
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As you know, I do do marginalia. I do add notes to my Kindle (though most of my books haven’t come from Amazon so I discovered like you that they weren’t there) but it’s not the same, as Arti says. I can’t do arrows etc and it seems that if you just do notes without highlighting the note appears without any context. In a book you just write next to the text and the context is always there. In other words, I haven’t really worked out how to make notes/marginalia work effectively on Kindle yet, but I suppose I will eventually!
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It used to be part of the fun of getting secondary criticism out of the university library – to see what other arrogant, bored, passionate or cheeky readers had written in the margins over the years! Sometimes there were ongoing conversations, too. Apparently, there’s been a sort of treasure hunt game that’s been played in the library for decades with the initiated – you know, a hint in a slip of paper inside a book, that takes you to another clue in another book, and so on. They’ll never manage to reproduce that on a kindle, alas.
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Helen Hanff has some interesting things to say about the links she makes to those people who have owned books before her and written in the margins. She loved it and once regaled the staff at 84 Charing Cross Road because they had written a dedicatory card and slipped it into the book rather than writing on the book itself. I haven’t yet explored the kindle option but I suspect you’re right about it only working for those books you’ve bought through Amazon. I have books on my kindle bought from other sources which I can’t then read on the kindle app on my I-pad. They don’t transfer in the same way.
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I was wondering about making my notes public, but I’ve only made a few and those are very brief! Anyway I followed the link to your notes and am now following you. I didn’t know about the Kindle marginalia site, so it’s all very new to me. Looking at my page I see that I highlighted some passages from the one Kindle -book I’ve read. I have made notes on books I downloaded from Gutenberg – but of course these aren’t included. Still I think it’s interesting – thanks for the info.
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Iliana, no it won’t compare to the “real” thing but it is something. If you start making notes on your Kindle, let me know!
Richard, heh, I’m not surprised you have read and marked up the article! I turned it into a PDF and marked it up, well, highlighted the passages I liked best, on my computer.
Adam, thanks! One of the things I like about Kindle is is social features. They just added those last fall. You can share notes, post passages to Twitter and Facebook. Kind of nice and fun.
Arti, yes, you are right, you can’t do all of those things you describe. Perhaps someday as e-reader evolve that will be possible but currently, paper is the thing when it comes to certain aspects of marginalia.
whisperinggums, I’m still figuring out how best to use the notes on kindle too. I like being able to Tweet from my Kindle. I Tweeted my reading of Turn of the Screw and it was great fun. I think the marginalia site is still in beta so hopefully eventually Amazon will allow notes and hightlights from books obtained from other sources.
Litlove, oh does that ever sound like fun! A library book treasure hunt. No, an e-bok could never replicate something like that.
Annie, I take it you’re a marginaliast? Kindle’s closed format is its biggest drawback, but I guess I can’t expect them to hold books I got from other sources on their servers. Still, it would be nice if their marginalia site allowed notes from sources. Maybe eventually. I hope.
BooksPlease, Oh, I will have to login later and follow you back! The marginalia site is fairly new, only up since last fall and I don’t think they made a big to-do about it but it is fun to poke around on.
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I’ve never been one to write notes in my books (I dog ear the pages if I want to go back to something), but I do find it interesting to see what other readers have written. You can highlight and make notes in a Nook, too, but I’m very clunky at it so far. Sounds like an interesting article–thanks for the link!
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You dog ear pages! Shock horror! 😉 I write marginalia (in light pencil) but never ever dog ear my books.
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It took me a Looooooooong time before I was okay with doing that–I’d always wanted to keep my books in pristine condition (I still shudder at broken spines!), but I never seem to have a pencil or post it handy so have gotten into the habit. Does it help that when I finish the pages get smoothed out again–I don’t leave them folded? 🙂
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I love the idea of spying on others’ marginalia, and I do add marginalia to my paper books (don’t own an e-reader), but I have to admit that the idea of making my marginalia public online and identified as mine is slightly intimidating! I already feel a bit too “watched” sometimes; not totally sure I want that corner of my life to be readily observable as well. Nonetheless, it’s definitely a cool technology.
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Boy, I’ve always been somewhat embarrassed when I lend books to friends that I’ve marked up a lot. I will stop being so and try to view my marginalia as added value to the books I lend. I used to mark up only nonfiction (and rarely at that) but since taking up blogging, I’ve begun marking up all sorts of books if I think I’m going to be blogging about them (and, now sometimes, even if I don’t). It’s funny: I haven’t been too worried about the loss of marginalia with the advent of the e-book. I’ve been convinced that it will eventually be possible in a way that is as easy as picking up a pencil or highlighter (especially as more and more students use e-textbooks, creating a demand). I love the idea, though, of being able to tap into marginalia from the past.
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Danielle, I’m with whisperinggums in being horrified that you dog ear pages 😉 I have been know to do so on occasion especially when I run out of page points. I don’t make a big fold, just a tiny one so I can find the page again. Highlighting and notetaking on the Kindle is fairly easy. Or, rather, I am used to it by now so it has become easy!
Emily, I know what you mean. I like the idea of looking at other people’s notes but I am shy about revealing mine. I thought long and hard before including that link to my Kindle notes page. But according to the article, at the high point of marginalia, asking friends to mark up your books was all the rage.
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Emily B, be embarrassed no more! The author of the article tells a great story about lending a book to a friend that he had marked up and then needing it back before the friend was finished so the friend obtained an unmarked copy and said that the experience just wasn’t the same, that reading an unmarked book felt somehow lonely. I am confident that eventually the ability to create marginalia in e-books will get better. Not sure that it will ever rival paper but, who knows? It’s possible that it might especially as you say, because of the e-textbook market. Something to keep an eye on!
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I like the idea of sharing reading notes with friends, although, like Emily, I’d be a little intimidated and would only want to share some things. But still, the idea is cool. It takes group reading projects like Infinite Summer (of Infinite Jest) to an entirely new level.
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That’s an interesting idea about bridging social and private reading, but it depends on far too many factors. First of all, does the reader even want to be social? It assumes readers also pass along their books freely, something that I personally rarely do (getting rid of – even more rare). The Kindle application seems like an interesting alternative, but it’s still something vaguely foreign to me – sharing personal reading thoughts. And, I suspect, to many other readers as well…
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Danielle, I had to laugh that you unfold the pages you dog ear. When I am forced to dog ear a page, I always go back after I am done with the book and smooth out the pages too!
Dorothy, the idea is a bit intimidating, isn’t it? But I have been trying to figure out why that should be especially when I have no trouble blogging about a book, why should I be nervous about sharing my highlights and notes? Perhaps it is the difference between raw and private and finished and public? Hmmm.
Bibliobio, I think in many ways readers do want to be social. Why else do we blog about the books we read? But of course, not all readers want to be social and that’s fine. I don’t lend my books either for the most part. If I lend a book there is part of me that doesn’t expect to get it back. But being able to share notes in a publilc space means you still get to keep the book. Sharing marginalia on the Kindle is pretty recent but there seems to be a growing number of people who are doing it and some readers have a large following. It will be interesting to see how it all develops.
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