As Kindles Take Over, What Happens to Margin Notes?
2011 03 19
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"Margin notes are finally having a moment in the literary limelight. With the evolution of e-readers and iPads-Kindle sales are said to have topped 8 million in 2010, iPads nearly double that, and Jeff Bezos recently announced that for every 100 paperbacks that now leave Amazon's warehouses, 115 e-books leave its servers-various members of the literati's old guard have stepped forward to meditate on the disappearing art of having a pen-in-hand "conversation" with an old-fashioned, battery-less book. [...] At present, annotating an e-book with a stylus is about as handy as marking up a Norton anthology with a Crayola. The amount of clicking required to two-finger type a note using the Kindle's mini keyboard is even worse."
Well, as one who delights in margin notes, I, too, am curious what's going to happen.
I know that as children many of us were taught that books were some sort of sacred cow that should in no fashion be abused in this manner. In some part, that's a good habit to teach a small child; but, as an adult I realised that books were meant to be used, not simply just read. So, I scribble away - thoughts, quotations, et cetera. There is nothing quite like that feeling of holding a book, of scribbling away in the book.
This article talks, in part, about the act of reading becoming social, "we learn to converse not with our books but through them. The risk is that this comes at the expense of our solitude, our sanity," and that's something (though interesting) that I do not need either (along with the loss of margin notes). Sharing of books is what book clubs are for, it's what conversations with friends are for. Reading, reading is so personal, solitary and intimate an act, that I do not want it shared - with anyone. It is something one does to seclude and dream, not something one wants intrusion upon. 2025 06 14: This is now, of course, an opinion I've somewhat changed. While I might still personally prefer to read alone most of the time, I do love the idea of public groups getting together to read together. They aren't bookclubbing, they're just gathering in a park and having a picnic with words in the same place. I like it. It's communal. It's nice.
Hurray for e-readers and tablet computers that make the act of reading easier for those for whom books are problematic - the weight for the elderly, the fixed print for the vision impaired, the awkwardness for the physically challenged, etc. But there are those of us who hope fervently that the printed book never goes out of fashion - those of us that love the weight of books and the turning of pages and the scribbling of notes.
2025 06 14: The concern of margin notes has, of course, been addressed. We can still make notes on a tablet - with a stylus or a keyboard. It's not quite the same, but it's still there, still possible.