Day: December 26, 2005

I just received the following spam:

Hi there, I just got off the phone with Giancarlo and he was telling me about his new book about getting what (and who) you want with the power of Witchcraft. Yes, I said Witchcraft. But not the bad kind that brings violent and negative effects in your life. It’s the helpful, spiritual way of the matter. It teaches you how to use easy spells and 5 minute rituals to bring more abundance, love, health and joy to your life. Anyway, he told me about the amount of copies he was selling on a daily basis and (after my jaw absolutely dropped) I was convinced we are in the middle of a ‘magic revolution’. He has many ecstactic customers writing testimonials and words of praise to him every day… He doesent know how long he can offer this book because he has to limit the number of copies, so I wanted to make sure you had your chance to read it before its gone. I am SURE you will love it 🙂

You hear that? A magic revolution. Whoa, sounds big. No wonder Giancarlo is “ecstactic.”

Who knew people felt so passionately about writing in and dogearing books. Personally, I don’t write in my books — for a number of reasons, the main one being that I often don’t know until I’ve read them if I’m going to want to sell my used copies. Margin notes are good for personal use, or for sentimental value, but if you’re passing the books on to strangers, they’re just going to make that tougher. People usually buy used books for their low cast and availability and not the potential marginalia previous owners may have left behind.

I also find, on the occasion that I do have something worth jotting down, that book margins often don’t afford me enough space for decent notes. I carry with me at (almost) all times a small Moleskin notebook, which I find serves my purposes much better. That’s where I write down thoughts, or reference pages I’d like to remember later. Most of the reading I do is on the train to and from work, and the sometimes bumpy ride and not infrequent lack of seats can make for some sloppy handwriting. I’d much rather have that sort of thing in a notebook, where I can edit after the fact, than in the margins, where it can make an inky mess of the page and make future readings simply difficult.

As far as dogearing pages go, I hate the whole idea. I like bookmarks, and if I want to remember an earlier page or section, I write it down. There’s always the index-card-as-bookmark, which I think is a happy medium between marginalia and a notebook. Write on the card as you go and keep that in the book when you’re done.

Any thoughts? What do you do when you read?

Original link via Boing Boing.

The Boston Globe wonders where all the utopias have gone:

Fans of [Philip K.] Dick, [Samuel R.] Delany, and their ilk warn neophytes not to read too many of their books too quickly: Doing so, as this reader can attest, tends to result in pronounced feelings of irreality, paranoia, and angst.

Tell that to one of my English professors in college, who assigned no less than three Dick novels in his science fiction course*.

Link via Bookslut.

* I no longer remember which three.