When I am supreme ruler anyone who annotates a book will be strung up from the nearest lamppost.
I was just about to start reading Nights at the Circus but when I've opened it up I've found out that an absolute mouthbreather has underlined passages of text or circled words they've needed to look up, like pinions, Nordic and hubris. This is the second book I've bought like this; the previous occasion was The Debt to Pleasure, which was mainly comments about how they hated the protagonist. I know there's the risk when you buy second-hand books, but for actual fuck's sake.
Second-hand book websites should normally say on the description whether any pages have been annotated or defaced.
Not meaning to be contrarian, but I annotate everything I read. I don't intend to ever sell anything from my library, though, partly for that reason. It's a great learning tool, and actually it helped me overcome some of the initial anxiety of learning. For me, it turned books from lifeless, intimidating, authoritative texts to living documents that I can (and should) react to.
Annotations have also been around for as long as the written word has, and they're an extremely useful for understanding intellectual history.
I quite like finding amateur annotations in second hand books. In a way it feels like an extra communication between people. Message in a bottle, maybe, but there's a nice feeling to it. Keep them out of the collectabled though.
I've made a few myself - which make for great realisation of how my ideas have developed since. I was such a monkey back then, and in 10 years time will probably come to find I am now too.
You might like S by Doug Dorst. Personally, I got bored halfway through.
>S. is a 2013 novel written by Doug Dorst and conceived by J. J. Abrams. The novel is unusual in its format, presented as a story within a story. It is composed of the novel Ship of Theseus by a fictional author, and hand-written notes filling the book's margins as a dialogue between two college students hoping to uncover the author's mysterious identity and the novel's secret plus loose supplementary materials tucked in between pages.
>>7079 I think the woman annotating Nights at the Circus got bored after page 43. At least there's no creases in the spine beyond that point and there doesn't seem to be any further comments either.
I'm only up to about page 17 because there's something about the book that makes me fall asleep after about four or five pages. Last night was the best night's sleep I've had in a long time; I'm feeling very refreshed now.
>>7079 I got up to finishing the introduction, because it was like reading notes on a lecture. Then the novel proper began and I got bored trying to keep track of the two parallel stories happening to the protagonist and the margin-scribblers.
I think it's the most effort-intensive book I've ever read, starting with having to remove it from the separate sleeve it comes in, to dealing with all the inserts and a fucking code-wheel, to not only reading two stories at once but keeping track of the colour of the ink they use in order to date precisely when in the story they are writing the note. Christ.
I remember people I sort of respected posting on facebook that HOL was the most mind-fucking book they'd ever read. I didn't read it, but I also wasn't sure what to make of such a statement.
