I want to be the person who reads attentively, underlining things and scrawling notes in the margins, then going back to reread years later, or share books with others who do the same. But I always get too caught up in the story, or just cant bring myself to do it when I do remember. It also slows down my pace of reading quite a lot, and I’m not that fast to begin with.

It doesn’t help that, as a librarian, the people who write in library books are the worst!

I always use clear sticky notes for highlighting and underlining, kind of gives the same experiencing as actually writing on it

That’s what I like about E-books, this isn’t even an issue. I only buy physical copies for books that I specifically want to own in such format, in which obviously I won’t write or underline anything.

Yes I mark mine up, surprised so many here don’t. I used to be a person that never did, but heard some people on podcasts highly recommend it, and I also began wanting to take notes. I think it adds value to the book on a re-read if you do it cleanly. I underline the first and last word of the highlight, with a curly bracket in the margin to indicate the area (sometimes a comment added), and a small plus sign in the top right corner to indicate which pages are noted. Then I can flip through when finished and dictate the notes to my computer. But they also make sticky tabs for page notes if you don’t wanna mark books up. I do have some visual or big coffee table books, like Poor Charlie’s Almanack, that I don’t want to mark up inside.

Never ever. I don’t know why, but I just can’t stand the idea of writing in my books. I don’t care if its spine is broken or the book is otherwise damaged, the inside must be clean and untouched.

But I tolerate you all, as long as you don’t underline stuff in mine when I lend them to you