I read a charming article in The Washington Post about a strange new trend. It seems that myriad bloggers and vloggers have a penchant for “annotation” of books, i.e.,  underlining favorite passages, scrawling in the margins, and flagging pages with stickie notes and paper clips. 

My eyes were round as saucers as I read the article.   I do not write in books. I do not underline with colored pens. I do not comment in the margins.  And I never buy a used book with even light marginalia.  

You cannot sell a used book with marginalia, either. In graduate school, my husband and I sold our books to eke out our tiny stipends. We learned that a clean book is worth more than a book scrawled with notes.  A cockroach once crawled out of one of my husband’s books: Johannes, the shop owner, gave him a withering look.  Johannes rejected one of my books on the basis of coffee stains. As for notes in books, Johannes disapproved of anything beyond one’s name written on an endpage, and that he clearly thought unnecessary.

Johannes taught us that books are important objects in their own right. I never saw a single book in that shop with writing in it.

It’s not that I’m against annotation, though I call it marginalia. But I prefer to take notes in a notebook. I write the page number beside my notes.

Step away from the highlighter, ma’am!