I am still reading Haruki Murakami's novel Killing Commendatore. I have been reading it slowly and thoughtfully, as there are many passages that interrupt my ability to push forward, leading me to sit back and ponder what I have been reading. I have probably spent as much time musing over the book as I have in actual reading, perhaps more. This is not a complaint. I love a book that demands attention, demands conversation.
But the process has also led my thoughts down subsidiary paths, caused me to reflect on the process of reading, of reading deeply, and my own inner conflict around marginalia and note taking. And that leads me to a question, a question not geared to those who read without noting, and move on. The question is, do you write in your books, or do you keep a reading journal, keep notes in a separate location? To be honest I don't think there is any best answer to this question, although I do wish to explore the issue as it relates to my own mental wiring.
I am mostly of the latter persuasion, but I have not always been convinced that this is the best way. Some part of me has always admired people who mark up their books, who write notes in the margins, and I realize that this is a more complex issue than I had previously assumed, at least in terms of my own psychological makeup. I admit that I don't often know what I am thinking until I write it out, or talk it out, but really there are only a handful of people in the world I can talk deeply with at that level, where knowledge and understanding and vulnerability can be laid out in the open without risk and growth can occur. I treasure those dear souls, but more often I am writing out my thoughts about books. Increasingly, I recognize that I admire practitioners of marginalia because I assume, probably not correctly, that they are smarter and more adept at pulling together their thoughts, than I. In fact, this may or may not be the case, and ultimately it is, altogether, the wrong question.
Perhaps it goes back to childhood, to those days when books were all a property of my parents, where we were not allowed to scribble in our books, to those days when we were taught to wash our hands before reading and hand inspections were routine, all the better to insure that grubby fingers would not mar precious pages. Those rules had something to do with a father who could not stand amateurish efforts, who probably did not want to be forced to encounter immature or silly thoughts. I how those rules fed my increasingly deep-seated insecurities by feeding my inner conviction that my thoughts were not good enough to compete, even in my own books, books I purchased myself, with those of wiser and more mature minds.
When I met George, one of the things he admired, and often mentioned to his friends, was how I would read scholarly journals and books, and that I always had a notebook where I copied out quotes from the books and wrote extensively about my understanding of what I was reading. This habit partially arose in childhood when my parents, increasingly worried about how quickly I plowed through books, required me to write book reports on everything I read.
I got in the habit of taking notes at an early age, rather than using a pen or a highlighter. Because the process of taking notes interrupts the flow of reading, and therefore of comprehension, I developed the habit of reading the book or article or chapter once through quickly, just for general understanding, and then a second time, more deeply, when I would copy, note, and ponder what I was reading. This habit served me well throughout college and grad school. I fretted that I was slow-witted, and needed more time to study than most of my peers, primarily because note taking is slow, but I also assumed that my fellow students, who did not take notes, naturally remembered more of what they read than I did, making the erroneous assumption that their lack of note taking skills was an indication of greater ability. In retrospect, I see that although I may have spent more time initially on my studies, I had the advantage when it came time for exams and term papers, as I already had extensive notes organized, I rarely had to crack my texts to study. I rarely needed to pull an all-nighter, and for the most part I could review my notes and ideas would return to the front of my memory. And so this habit, this habit of writing things out was honed.
I still admire marginalia. I've even gone through periods when I tried it with varying degrees of success. I admit I love reading a second hand book where the original reader has made notes. The notes enhance the reading experience, making me look at what I am reading with different eyes, and act therefore much like a conversation between readers. But for me this is the gift of a double-edged sword, because even as another person's notes can make me look at a book in a new way, they can also prevent me from forming my own independent relationship with the book. My understanding of the book is shaped subtly by what someone else has written. I don't know if this is universal, or if it stems from some insidious remnant of that early insecurity. This proves to be the problem for me with my own books as well. I love rereading books. For the most part, I feel that if a book is worth owning it is worth rereading. The conversation will evolve with each reading. What I have found, for me, at least, is that if I have notes or underlined and bracketed passages in a book, my previous relationship with the book shapes my future reading. We stop growing together, the book and I, just as, with a person, friendships can stop evolving if we refuse to forgive a slight, or acknowledge our separate growth and changes in circumstances.
I love other people's marginalia more perhaps than I love my own, although I increasingly indulge, creating my own small system of notes, even as I struggle with its effectiveness for me. I personally feel less invested in books if I have only marked them up without also writing extensively about the process of reading. I still admire people that write in their books, and still, deep down in some corner of my soul, feel that the ability is a higher calling. I can also admit that, in my youth especially, not writing in my books was something of a self-protective mechanism, a personal wall to protect myself from vulnerability. If no one could read what I wrote, I could feel safe and protected. Notebooks, after all could be destroyed.
Now that I find myself beginning my 7th decade on this planet, most of those early insecurities have been recognized for what they are, and mostly banished to the margins of my existence. But the patterns that I have developed seem to have become a part of the way I think, and although they are now hard to break completely, I believe I can still adapt. I still write out particularly favored passages. The advent of ebooks and ebook readers has made it easier to highlight, and to erase highlights, making the process faster. I can highlight a book as I read it, send my notes and highlights to Evernote, and then edit the whole thing, returning to the book as needed to expand upon ideas. I still make handwritten notes, but I use Evernote as well, both by typing in particular passages, and scanning in handwritten notes on books. This is helpful due to the search ability of Evernote. I can read a book again, and go back and look at my notes, should I desire to do so.
I no longer have my old college notebooks, even my reading notebooks from before I moved to Tennessee. I had file cabinets full of notes and journals and I destroyed them all. Do I regret that? Sometimes. That all harkens back to that deeply seated insecurity, and the entire world-upending changes that I was thrown into with George's illness and descent into dementia. My insecurities came back to haunt me in those days, and I realized I had built a structure of confidence and self worth that was fragile, that was built on sand. When the storm came my identity came crashing down and I was thrown into the pit.
I can ask again, do I regret having destroyed my journals and notebooks? In part, yes, because they connect me to a part of myself. But that part is not lost. I do remember. But now I am, mostly, better at integrating the parts of myself. Now I can move forward. I still take notes, but once in a while I will bracket and underline, once in a while a note will appear in the margins of a book, often linked and connected to something written somewhere, or some computer file. I find myself finding strength and joy in going more slowly, in letting go of the idea that happiness and joy comes from doing more, but rather from enjoying the conversation. Whether that conversation is with a friend, a book, or the way the sunshine hits my face as it breaks through the clouds is irrelevant.