How to make a book your own

Why is marking a book indispensable to reading it? 

First, it keeps you awake, not merely conscious, but wide awake. 

Second, reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or written. The person who says he knows what he thinks bu...

Full ownership of a book only comes when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it— which comes to the same thing— is by writing in it.

Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author. It is the highe...

When you are willing to engage with the book by writing in it, you pay the author the highest respect.

• Underline the important points.
• Draw vertical lines at the margin when a passage is too long to underline.
• Emph...