I used to be scandalized by the thought of annotating anything outside of my literature classes' texts (and even that made me feel guilty)... until a friend lent me a copy of a book they'd annotated. It was the most intimate and beautiful reading experience. Now, I like the idea of owning a unique copy of my favorite books
I usually annotate books I'm reading for the first time as PDFs on my iPad, and I prefer to have two copies of any book I physically annotate. That way, I can lend out the "clean" one to people I don't want seeing my innermost thoughts...
As a perfectionist (in the worst way) annotating books has helped me work through the perfectionist and self-doubt issues that have previously stopped me from writing in all the beautiful notebooks I buy. Yeah, the ones that are made for writing in...
If the book is not a rare edition, and there are millions of copies of it out in the world, why not leave your mark? of all the books that gather dust, or get destroyed and go to landfills, before they are even read... why think that the one you've read so closely, and interacted with so indelibly, and annotated in pen and highlighter and bathwater and tears, is a waste?
Your thoughts are worth the paper they are written on, even if that paper already has words on it, even if your words are imperfect, and maybe especially because they are... 🖤