Comment by Diogenesian
5 days ago
I buy used books: it sucks to see someone else's notes scribbled all over the page. It's like a really annoying guy whispering at you with vapid explanations while you're trying to pay attention to a lecture.
"Cross out stuff you disagree with" actually makes me sick.
It also seems useless for understanding and retention, since highlighting is almost always misleading and margin notes are almost always empty. If you want to write notes, get a notebook, which gives you space to write real thoughts down. I use a trapper-keeper.
I disagree. I love buying used books and seeing what other people found interesting, whether it's by way of notes in the margins, highlights, etc. I also love it when people write their name in the front of the book and when they read it. I like the idea of a single copy of a book making its way among many people, all adding their own thoughts.
Same reason I miss those library cards found in the back of books. I enjoyed seeing the history a book had, how years could pass without anyone checking it out or seeing a flurry of checkouts.
wow I hadn't thought of those in a while and I also used to love seeing that history and thinking about where the book had been. Thanks!!
Me too! Those library card were more interesting than the book sometimes.
If only people did this with care. I have seen too many books where people just highlight everything.
The same is true in every realm: taste matters. But that's not a reason to blanket-discourage expression.
(I do wonder if the people here who hate it are picturing students who blindly highlight pages, and the people who like it are remembering the times they've seen a few pencilled sentences in margins of an old book)
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I once picked up an old copy of Bartlett’s Quotations and found that the prior highlighting owner found it nearly 100% profound.
Yeah, I am always reminded of the "property of the Half-Blood Prince".
There is nothing wrong with scribbling in your own books.
There is also nothing wrong with donating such books with clearly written disclaimer on the front page about the condition of the book.
Repackaging as 99% likenew and selling them should be a crime though.
it was funny seeing this right below the comment saying "I _love_ buying a used book and finding a previous reader's notes in the margins. It's the greatest.".
different strokes. if you want to ensure you don't get sick from a line being crossed out, buy new.
I have a book (not authored by Edison) that Thomas Edison scribbled his comments in the margin and I was quite happy to read them! Changing my own nearly-religious belief to never write in a book,I found that it totally changed my experience with the book and the author. There are thousands of copies of any particular modern book and it's no longer my task to preserve that unique copy for after the apocalypse. I would like to imagine my children one day being able to see their father's thoughts and dialogue with authors.
That's incredibly cool actually, what was the book? Could you share anything he wrote which you found especially interesting?
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This is so condescending. The reason I buy used is that the overwhelming majority of books are out of print and not available digitally. Which makes the vandalism especially egregious!
It's not vandalism. Calling it that is condescending.
You can buy unmarked used books. Just check. (And if you're buying online the state of the book is expected to be in the description.)
vandalism is destruction of someone else's property. that's not what is happening when someone chooses to write in a book that they own.
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Learn what words mean. That comment is not remotely condescending, and scribbling in one's own book (with no indication here that the owner intends to sell it) is not vandalism.
Oh, I recognize your name ... wrong about so many things.
From another one of your comments here:
> No, my argument is that it's totally obnoxious to lend or resell a book that you've written in
But the person who advocated for writing in one's books if desired said nothing about lending or reselling them ... YOU were the first person here, in your response to them, to whine about BUYING such books. Talk about obnoxious!
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It was extremely common back in the 1500/1600s, when books were far more rare and valuable to write in them. Almost every copy of these truly old books has something written in them, often by multiple people as the owners changed. That's part of the history of the book.
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If the notes are good it can be a gem. If not, then it also really bothers me.
Another way of saying it is discussing a book with some people will be really rewarding. But others you will rather prefer not to. This is just an instance of a more generalizable rule: people develop preferences regarding who they want to spend their time with.
FWIW, I switched over to the post-it note method (mostly) in the 90s for real live books. Grab a few colors and shapes. Easy to remove if you don't want to share your thoughts with someone else if the book is something you later choose to get rid of.
Well not everyone has the privilege to buy new books, especially course-mandated books that the professor "coincidentally" wrote and costs hundreds of dollars.
I would even say that "crossing out lines you disagree with" is vandalism because a book can always be read by others and come to a different conclusion and debate in their mind from there.
Why treat books as disposable mind scaffolds when they can be used again by others productively and even preserved for later generations? If you found a book to be at least somewhat useful to write notes on, then why would others not also find it useful?
Margin notes are fine though as long as they do not make the main contents of the book unreadable like "crossing out lines".
This is why "condition" exists for secondhand books. People can choose a written-in one or not. If you can't afford new, note that written-in ones are often even cheaper!
I have been delighted by the writing I've seen in books, especially if it's a copy of a friend or family member, as you feel you are connecting to another reader years later, and the item is no longer identically mass-produced. But maybe it depends on the taste of the person writing in the book.
>I would even say that "crossing out lines you disagree with" is vandalism
if you cross out words in a book you borrowed, that is vandalism. if you cross out words in a book you own, by definition, that is not vandalism.
it would be uncool to mark up a textbook you planned to resell at the end of the semester, but it still would not be vandalism assuming you bought the textbook.
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I think the truth is most printed copies of books are rarely read even once, so the idea of preserving them is noble but realistically not that important. And may be outweighed by benefits accrued to the person currently owning and reading it making the most of it and marking to their hearts content.
I admit I don’t mark up my books but I feel tempted to try
> Well not everyone has the privilege to buy new books, especially course-mandated books that the professor "coincidentally" wrote and costs hundreds of dollars.
Do you even understand what you sound like? "Writing in something you own is vandalism because poor people".
I’ll never forget seeing a girl in a cafe highlight, line by line, nearly an entire page of a textbook. Watching the page curl from the wetness, almost as if writhing in pain.
I'll (lightheartedly) come to their defense to say that this is how I and a lot of my peers made it through med school. The wetness of the page indeed unlocked some supressed memories.
I think it's a combination of a ritual and some sort of somewhat-more-elevated engagement (or wishing thereof) with the material. Somewhere between meditative ritual and attention aid. I doubt it helped much, if at all - except for Stabilo; they were the true winners.
I remember as an undergrad watching some philosophy majors do this with their reading and their explanation was that it helps them track reading progress. And to your point, that tactile act probably helps a lot with engagement!
The unfortunate part is that you can't then unhighlight a passage.
Yeah... There was no "reading" in our ancestral environment, it's rather unnatural for a human brain to focus on the page where nothing happens. Some people can adapt to that, other people need stimulation of some kind.
And it's not like some ADHD thing which is new. E.g. Stanisław Lem as a kid: "But because the act of reading was too passive, too simple, I would rest a chair leg on my calf or knee or foot and with little movements keep the chair at the very brink of falling."
Your argument is that in order for you to have a better experience the previous owner should not “ruin” the book for you. I’ve read better arguments on bathroom stalls.
No, my argument is that it's totally obnoxious to lend or resell a book that you've written in, and it's a shallow way of taking notes to begin with. It is precisely what Socrates warned us about.
I'd say this is a problem with the seller's communication, not the use of the book. If the seller didn't specify that the book was marked up, I agree with your sentiment. The act of writing in a book and selling it isn't the issue, but setting false expectations to whoever you're selling it to is.
> and it's a shallow way of taking notes to begin with
Are we really going to speak down to how someone uses a bunch of paper bound together? That's how they wanted to use it, which is cool, it's just not how you like it.
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Probably the most treasured item I own is a novel a good friend of mine gave me as a gift. It was one of their favourite books, and they'd highlight lines and sections that resonated with them by putting brackets around them using a pen. Coming across those sections, and learning a bit more about them in the process, is like finding little nuggets of gold.
But I get where you're coming from as well. I guess it just really depends on the context of who/what/why when it comes to reading.
it's totally obnoxious to buy a copy of a book with notes in it and complain about those notes. 2¢
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GP makes no mention of re-selling. They explicitly talk about revisiting. Your comment would have done better as a standalone as opposed to a response to them.
And not that it matters, but "cross out" doesn't imply "destroy beyond recognition." A simple strike-through is sufficient to keep the text legible (so you remember what it is you disagree with).
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This is why used books are graded. Marks lower the grade of the book. Buy a higher grade of used book.
Aside from shallow, uncritical notes, consider that annotating in a margin is evidence that a reader is actively engaging with a text.
Very often when I write in margins it's to question or argue against what's written (e.g. "really? what about ...", or "no, contradicts ...") which, to me, seems in line with the dialectic process Socrates promoted. Multiple sides, truth-seeking.
Sure, having a spacious notebook on the side is even better. But it's the same goal, isn't it? Engage more deeply with a text and encourage questioning as you read it, while it's still fresh.
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> bathroom stalls
That's like, elite literary territory though. Let's stick to the discussion on books.
The first time I read "this sentence is false" it was scrawled in a bathroom stall in the philosophy department. Seemed appropriate. Left me wondering how many other people had also sat there pondering it for a few moments, certainly more than that had called that number for a good time.
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Some come here to sit and think, but I come here to...
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As an analogy, imagine buying a movie you've always wanted to see, and when you start watching it you find the previous owner added a voice over on top of the audio containing their off the cuff thoughts about the movie.
The owner of a book doesn't owe anything to a random future person who picks it up from their estate sale or whatever. Vanishingly few books are irreplaceable enough to need to be treated as special relics to carefully preserve for posterity, and those that are tend to be already in a museum, library, or the collection of someone fastidious.
> sucks to see someone else's notes
You don't have to buy books with notes in them.
> Vanishingly few books are irreplaceable enough to need to be treated as special relics to carefully preserve for posterity
I wouldn't be so sure of that.
I always make an effort to buy books I really like (or expect to really like) in hardcover. This is because, around 20 years ago, I found some shelves full of books in a house belonging to some ancestors of mine. The books ranged from maybe 60 to 120 years old and had been unattended maybe for 40 or 50 years. At a first glance, all the books looked fine, but when picking them up, the paperback books literally crumbled in my hands and were unsalvageable. The hardcover ones were fine and I still have some with me now.
The thing is, lately hardcover runs of most books seem to be pitifully small. They print a few at the beginning and then they switch to paperback only. Often I want to buy a book that is only 5 or 10 years old, and almost no one has the hardcover. Those who do often demand extortionate prices. It's not uncommon to see regular hardcover editions of regular books with nothing special from 10 years ago, with retail price around €20, sell second hand for €100.
So if you consider that paperbacks aren't valid for preservation because they will crumble sooner than later, there will be many books with a rather small number of copies available.
> You don't have to buy books with notes in them
Although tbf its kinda hard to check without reading the whole book, no? A bit like saying "you don't have to buy a jigsaw puzzle with a piece missing"
Totally agreed. I find it distracting working through a book that's been marked up by someone else. In fact, I get the same feeling even if I marked it up myself, which is why I stopped writing in books. I would prefer to keep my thoughts and the author's thoughts separate. When I want to know what the author thinks, I'll go to the book; when I want to remember what I thought, I'll go to my notes.
You can totally mark up your books. No issue with that, if you like it. I don't personally, but I don't see why someone shouldn't do it. Now should you sell those books? Probably not.
Obviously (I hope), once you've grafittied your book, you shouldn't sell it as unaltered!
That doesn't mean scribbling in your own book is wrong.
I agree, and the very low price of used books that have writing in them, suggests that this is how people feel in general.
I have begun to write a page (by hand) summarizing my thoughts after reading a book, and put it in the start of it. That was a tip I saw on HN some time ago.
This is like saying that because some (or many) people are bad at taking notes and highlighting, taking notes and highlighting is a bad idea. It's a skill like anything else. You get better at it the more you do it.
I don't know about you, but when I re-read a book 20 years later it's unlikely I'll have that trapper keeper handy. Re-reading something later and seeing my younger thoughts is magical.
Or use sticky notes! My friend annotated her favorite book with notes for me and it was awesome.
Crossing out things you disagree with is the most insane part of this. You should highlight or comment those if you’re going to mark the book up at all.
Nah I got this used text book once and it had all sorts of ridiculous stuff written in the margins. Some of the authors instructions were crossed out and replaced with their own instructions. I was really annoyed at first but then I tried some of the instructions and they were actually better than the author. I'm doing really well in potions class now.
I would never sell my marked up books. They're too precious.
Why do you buy used books? You sound like the person who would prefer new books.
I answered this several times in the thread: almost every book is out of print, including some of my favorites. I would be much more stupid and boring if I only read new books. And of course indicates why scribbling in a book is so terrible: if it's Tolkein or Susan Rice or Chem 101 7th edition then sure, whatever. But a lot of the worst scribbling comes from graduate students who don't value the text they're bloodlessly working through.
Some books and some editions in particular can be hard to find new.
Then don't buy used books? They are _used_. If you want a new book, buy a new book?
I read two books recently that are out of print. One of them (Georges Rey's Contemporary Philosophy of Mind) is $150 on Amazon, and out of stock. The other (Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, and Ends) isn't on Amazon at all. Used bookstores are the only viable option.
Books are treasures. The second book is an enormously valuable source of wisdom. I am glad nobody vandalized that wisdom with marginalia and highlighting.
>vandalized
for someone so concerned about knowledge, you don't seem to be too worried about continually using this word incorrectly.
If they're so valuable, maybe you could spare a thought of thanks that the previous owners passed them onto posterity, whatever the condition. If you don't like the condition, feel free to continue your search. Getting heated over their use of their own property isn't very philosophical of you.
You do realize that in the 1500/1600s when books were incredibly rare and valuable it was extremely common to write in the margins and that such writing is now usually treasured?
Also it seems like you can buy the George Rey one for $54 new here https://www.wiley.com/en-us/shop/general-philosophy/contempo...
unless you also don't believe in paperbacks.
And the other is on amazon _new_ here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0198244649?lv=shuf&channelId=500&p...
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It's 100% okay for people to write in their own books, and it's okay for them to donate or sell them after the fact as long as they don't hide the fact they are written in.
No one is forcing you to buy used books with writing in them.
I used to go to a shop in a student area and pick up old Norton's Anthologies. Many of the notes were unintentionally funny. Some are occasionally insightful.
As I say elsewhere, it depends on the edition or book, and how common they are.
different people work in different ways. just because you hate it doesn't mean it won't be helpful for others.
also if you're buying used books, expect them to be used!
"expect them to be used!"
I would expect them to be in the condition they were graded as. I'll avoid poor or fair condition books that have lots of marking in them. Good books that have minimal marking should be fine to me.
Writing on a book is a bad way to treat a book. I hate it.
Or maybe just use a pencil to make notes. The buyer of the second hand book can still enjoy your opinions while being able to erase them at will.
Suit yourself, my family ended up with two used copies of "The Hobbit" and we kept the one that some kid had marked up.
Had to google "trapper-keeper". Never heard that one before, gave me a bit of a chuckle.
I would hate reading a censored book. But a second had book with side notes and highlights is a chief reason for me to buy second hand book. Call it a time traveling mail box.
No one is forcing you to buy books that have been scribbled in.
If someone buys a book then they own it and can do what they want with it, without concern that maybe some day they will sell it and some narcissistic rando will resent them for what they have done with their own property.
"narcissistic rando" half of these replies are making personal attacks. Knock it off.
FWIW, I'm picking up a very aggressive tone from the majority of your responses here. I'm not at all justifying the personal attacks, but I would posit that the tone perhaps invites them to a degree.
If there's no aggression intended, that's great, but I'm struggling to not see it when I read them.
then dont buy used books pay for the new books
I mean, that sounds like a you problem. Buy a new book or check to make sure the used book is not marked up before buying it.
You may dislike buying used books like that, but the purpose of the previous owner wasn't to satisfy your future desire for a pristine copy. The purpose was his own knowledge. If that's what works for him, so be it. It's his book.
So it's a little self-centered to make this about you. It's not.