I’ve mentioned in another post that I set a goal this year to read at least 10 pages of a book per day. I’ve had no issues at all sticking with that but I stumbled across BookTube, which is a niche on YouTube that has to do with, you guessed it, books! Every channel I’ve watched is about dead tree books and some of the creators have *very* strong opinions about books vs kindle. Some have these elaborate annotation systems for each book they read with color-coded tabs and highlighters.
Until ~4 months ago I’d never written in or highlighted a paper book, not even a textbook because it felt … wrong to do that and I can’t put a finger on why. I was reading “The Meaning in the Making” by Sean Tucker who is a photographer, filmmaker, author, and YouTuber based in the UK and I have to say while it did feel strange writing in the book I also felt more connected with that book than I have with any other. I just flipped through it while typing this and I remember where I was and how I was feeling when I read what I marked. I don’t have a fancy system for annotating, I basically just underline, circle and box quotes that I like or have an impact on me. I’m going to expand my non-existent annotation system with writing in the margins about how the things I’m marking made me feel.
So back to the question of this post. Dead tree books or Kindle? Well, for me, it depends. With my Kindle, I *do* annotate by highlighting quotes that catch my eye or have a deeper meaning for me. I’m not sure why I had (have?) such an issue with doing the same on paper books. I rarely ever sell books or give them away so it’s not like I’m hoping they’ll keep their value. It’s weird. I’m weird, welcome to my brain :-D. I’m also one of those weirdos who loves the smell of a DTB, I don’t care if that’s weird I *love* walking into a book store and the smell of all those books is just saturating the air! It’s one of my favorite places to be, as a matter of fact!
What’re your thoughts? Let me know in the comments!