Apparently, this whole effort to keep marginalia alive is still rolling alone – at least in this New York Times piece.

I am very sympathetic to the idea, but I admit to also being one of those people who cringe at writing in their books. Perversely though, I love finding old books at used bookstores with notes written in it by a prior owner.

One of the few books I have personally marked up is Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus. It has been badly battered (I used to drag it to my favorite LA bar, the Pig and Whistle and read it while drinking and eating their nachos [their secret – using wonton chips instead of tortilla chips]). It’s also filled with tons of bookmarks, with little notes written on them. But I have also done a little scribbling of some marginalia.

The reason that particular book got special treatment is that it has been a real struggle for me. I don’t pretend to truly understand many of the concepts described (the “body without organs,” for example).

I should also mention a exhibit held at the Folger Shakespeare Library called “Extending the Book” about something called grangerizing. In the nineteenth century, folks used to expand their books by adding new pages to them. They would have them rebound to allow for the new, larger size. Often, the additions were illustrations that they thought had some correspondence to the action within the text. While not, technically speaking, marginalia, it is certainly the ultimate in book owners not holding their tomes sacred in its original form.