5 ms·
it was funny seeing this right below the comment saying "I _love_ buying a used book and finding a previous reader's notes in the margins. It's the greatest.".
by john_strinlai 3mo ago
it was funny seeing this right below the comment saying "I _love_ buying a used book and finding a previous reader's notes in the margins. It's the greatest.".
different strokes. if you want to ensure you don't get sick from a line being crossed out, buy new.
- RRWagner 3mo agoI have a book (not authored by Edison) that Thomas Edison scribbled his comments in the margin and I was quite happy to read them! Changing my own nearly-religious belief to never write in a book,I found that it totally changed my experience with the book and the author. There are thousands of copies of any particular modern book and it's no longer my task to preserve that unique copy for after the apocalypse. I would like to imagine my children one day being able to see their father's thoughts and dialogue with authors.
- nahkoots 3mo agoThat's incredibly cool actually, what was the book? Could you share anything he wrote which you found especially interesting?
- RRWagner 3mo agoThe book is "Making Good in Business" by Roger W. Babson. Babson gifted the book to Edison in 1921. Here is a link to a scan of another copy of the book in the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/bwb_P9-DAU-349/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/bwb_P9-DAU-349/mode/2up Here is my github repo with scans of the marginalia from Edison: https://github.com/RRWagner/Making-Good-in-Business-Babson-Edison https://github.com/RRWagner/Making-Good-in-Business-Babson-E...
- throwaway554514 3mo agoGot excited to check it out. fyi the same image (inscription) somehow got uploaded for all the images.
- RRWagner 3mo agoThank you for the heads up! There was an error in the conversion process. All the images are there now.
- Chilko 3mo agoThese were interesting: "History proves that religion is a curse and is the master scheme for Exploitation of man" - p47 "God helps nobody. 20 million perished in the late war — for no fault of theirs Why did God permit this" - p48
- Diogenesian 3mo agoThis is so condescending. The reason I buy used is that the overwhelming majority of books are out of print and not available digitally. Which makes the vandalism especially egregious!
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- Dylan16807 3mo agoIt's not vandalism. Calling it that is condescending. You can buy unmarked used books. Just check. (And if you're buying online the state of the book is expected to be in the description.)
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- john_strinlai 3mo agovandalism is destruction of someone else's property. that's not what is happening when someone chooses to write in a book that they own.
- Diogenesian 3mo agoYou noted elsewhere I said "vandalize that wisdom." Perhaps you should think a little more about why I am using the word "vandalize" provocatively and figuratively.
- john_strinlai 3mo agoyes, you are using it to emotionally bolster your argument, despite it being an incorrect characterization. it reveals that your argument is not very strong.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- ekelsen 3mo ago
- godwinson__4-8 3mo agoIf the notes are good it can be a gem. If not, then it also really bothers me. Another way of saying it is discussing a book with some people will be really rewarding. But others you will rather prefer not to. This is just an instance of a more generalizable rule: people develop preferences regarding who they want to spend their time with.
- jambalaya8 3mo agoFWIW, I switched over to the post-it note method (mostly) in the 90s for real live books. Grab a few colors and shapes. Easy to remove if you don't want to share your thoughts with someone else if the book is something you later choose to get rid of.
- jskherman 3mo agoWell not everyone has the privilege to buy new books, especially course-mandated books that the professor "coincidentally" wrote and costs hundreds of dollars. I would even say that "crossing out lines you disagree with" is vandalism because a book can always be read by others and come to a different conclusion and debate in their mind from there. Why treat books as disposable mind scaffolds when they can be used again by others productively and even preserved for later generations? If you found a book to be at least somewhat useful to write notes on, then why would others not also find it useful? Margin notes are fine though as long as they do not make the main contents of the book unreadable like "crossing out lines".
- spunker540 3mo agoI think the truth is most printed copies of books are rarely read even once, so the idea of preserving them is noble but realistically not that important. And may be outweighed by benefits accrued to the person currently owning and reading it making the most of it and marking to their hearts content. I admit I don’t mark up my books but I feel tempted to try
- john_strinlai 3mo ago>I would even say that "crossing out lines you disagree with" is vandalism if you cross out words in a book you borrowed, that is vandalism. if you cross out words in a book you own, by definition, that is not vandalism. it would be uncool to mark up a textbook you planned to resell at the end of the semester, but it still would not be vandalism assuming you bought the textbook.
- shash 3mo agoAgain, depends… I have appreciated my seniors’ notes in some textbooks - especially where the book itself isn’t clear.
- usef- 3mo agoThis is why "condition" exists for secondhand books. People can choose a written-in one or not. If you can't afford new, note that written-in ones are often even cheaper! I have been delighted by the writing I've seen in books, especially if it's a copy of a friend or family member, as you feel you are connecting to another reader years later, and the item is no longer identically mass-produced. But maybe it depends on the taste of the person writing in the book.