Notebook Stream
6 Entries
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Reading
A short history of complaining in the margins
Readers have been leaving grumpy notes in books for as long as there have been margins to leave them in.
Notebook
I have tried every note-taking system and none of them stuck
A partial, embarrassing inventory of the systems I've adopted and abandoned, and what finally worked instead.
Elsewhere
What a secondhand shop’s previous owner leaves behind
A pressed leaf, a receipt used as a bookmark, somebody else's marginal notes — the accidental archive inside a used book.
Notebook
Three ways of marking up the same paragraph
Underline, marginal note, and dog-ear each record a different kind of reaction — and I keep forgetting that.
Essays
The commonplace book, before it was a metaphor
Before 'commonplace' meant ordinary, it named a specific kind of notebook — and a specific kind of reading.
Essays
What the word marginalia actually covers
Not just underlining. The word covers a much wider habit than the pencil marks most people picture.