Incorporating Writing into Reading — The Simple Beauty of Annotation
Mortimer Adler, in this simple essay “How to Mark a Book” turned me into a reader — through writing. In middle school and most of high school, I hated reading. No one could get me to read a book. It wasn’t until my Senior Year of high school when I read this essay. It changed my view of reading and what reading should look like. Fast forward, I became a teacher — a teacher of the most challenging and once-hated subject of mine: English.
The above link is that essay.
Here’s what this will eventually look like — from my favorite book The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. Beautiful, right?
If you didn’t read it (and trust me to give you an accurate summary), here are the main — and most important — points.
When you read something, make it BELONG to you. Here’s a secret about me: I don’t share books. Too much of my own thinking is in them. I write inside every possible crevasse of the books I own.
Guess what? Those books belong to me.
Because my thoughts belong to me.
Let me explain.
Reading requires active thinking — a lot of active thinking. The struggle with reading is being able to make all those thoughts work together in your mind as the passage progresses — AND remembering them. These thoughts should be written down!
And any thoughts — not just thoughts about main idea or theme or setting or characters or details. Even if it’s as simple as, “Wow this is hard to read” or “I hate the words they’re using” or “I once had this happen to me.” Any thought you have while reading, write it down.
That reading, in all pieces that matter now has this one little piece of you on the page. Your thoughts are yours; that’s what makes them one-of-a-kind.
And, you know, giving your reading or your books up to someone else even just to borrow suddenly becomes a lot more personal when your own ideas and thoughts are written between the lines.
Reading is difficult, and, yes, writing in a book makes it take longer. Here, however, are the benefits to what Mortimer Adler is saying:
Writing helps you stay awake. Literally. If you are writing on something you are reading, you are actively engaging your mind. Instead of being confused and bored, you are writing down your confused and bored thoughts. Everyone has to start somewhere.
Writing between the lines helps you remember the lines. It’s a memory thing. You are engaging more parts of your brain. Trust me, I took a psychology class once. Also, you are more likely to remember something you make a personal — and UNIQUE — thought about than you are writing down something that means nothing to you. (Hence, in the first point, you write down when it bores you, and you remember the part that bored you. Weird, right?)
Writing helps you work through your thoughts. As one of my college professors said, “Teaching is the process of organizing your thoughts.” How can you organize any thoughts without first writing them down?
Writing makes reading worth it. It’s an uphill grind to get yourself in the habit, but, like all good things, the result is well worth it.
Find your favorite (probably-colorful) pen or your sharpest pencil and get writing — in, on, around, and beside every word you read. Here’s how you do that:
Look for parts of the reading that matter to YOU.
Don’t be afraid to feel any and all feelings!
Draw your emotions (emojis are great inventions, people).
Connect to it somehow — with love, hatred, life events, people, characters, moments, yourself.
For those who value the wellbeing of a book and REFUSE with every fiber of their being that they are not to be written in: what good is reading a book if you can’t remember what you thought about it? Why be afraid to put your thoughts on a page full of someone else’s thoughts? Reading is a two-way street. Drive your mind.
And for those who have jumped on the technological bandwagon that is e-readers or Kindles or Nooks, technology hasn’t yet developed a solid way for us to actively and naturally think on the page. Sure, we can highlight or make little notes here and there, but it feels disconnected and sometimes-superficial. Solution? Carry a tiny reading notebook. When you go to read something on your fancy e-reader, your notebook can be right there by your side to be a connection to your thoughts and ideas that e-readers aren’t quite at the level of yet. Fingers crossed that they will be someday.
Last but not least, write anything and everything down — sticky notes, on the page, on an accompanying paper, in the margins, in a notebook.
Anywhere you read, don’t forget to write.
Happy Writing.
