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Comment by yodsanklai | Hacker News Reader

To me, the main benefit of buying books is that I can keep them for reference, I often use technical books for years. Old books also have a sentimental value for me and I'm having a hard time getting rid of them.

BTW, I would never write anything in a book. I wonder if I'm the only one.

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I rarely write in a book besides my name in pencil in the front. But when I see an error that I can't ignore, I'll make a copyediting mark or note in the margin so I can move on. Very occasionally I'll get a book that I need to argue with, and then the margins get filled, sorry to anyone who eventually finds these.

I think my reluctance is mostly about keeping a book in the state I got it, since I do frequently mark up interesting sections of PDFs in my e-reader.

It varies. I grew up not writing in books, because until high school most of the books I handled were either school books, mine to use for the school year, or library books. That was a while ago. These days, I have no scruples, but I tend to write only in work that requires some concentration, mostly philosophy. I read a fair bit of history and fiction, but don't tend to write in them.

> BTW, I would never write anything in a book. I wonder if I'm the only one.

You're not. I don't consider myself the final owner of the things I possess.

I like seeing little notes from prior readers. References to other works, question marks, and angry exclamation points are all fun to see.

Underlining or highlighting can be interesting to see what the other reader thought was important. Highlighters can be distracting when they overdo it, but even then it can be fun to see where the highlighting tapers off were the prior reader just gave up.

But dog ears or times when someone folded a whole page in half is just painful.

I don't imagine myself to be the final owner of the things, but I am definitely the current user--and chances are the future user, and writing in the book makes the use better. Somebody may wear some of my clothes someday. Does that mean I can't have them altered for better fit?

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