Reading with a pencil in hand

For years I read the way I was taught to treat library books: carefully, invisibly, as if I had never been there. I finished plenty of good books that way and remembered almost nothing about them a month later.

What changed was a secondhand copy of a novel whose previous owner had written all over it. Small ticks beside sentences. A question mark in the margin of chapter four. One word, underlined twice, on the last page. Reading it felt like sitting next to someone, and I realised I had never let myself be that someone.

Why a pencil, not a highlighter

A highlighter only says “this.” A pencil lets you say why. It is also forgiving: you can soften a hasty note later, and the page still looks like a page instead of a colouring book.

• A tick for a line that lands.
• A question mark for something you doubt or do not yet understand.
• A short note when a passage reminds you of something else you have read or lived.
• A page number on the inside cover for anything you want to find again.

What it does to memory

Writing slows you down at exactly the right moments. You cannot mark a sentence without deciding what you think of it, and that small decision is what makes it stick. When I open an old book now, my margins tell me who I was when I read it, which is sometimes more interesting than the book.

The margins are where the reading actually happens. The printed page is only half of the conversation.

If marking a book still feels wrong, start with a cheap paperback you already own. Keep a pencil in it as a bookmark. Within a chapter or two the hesitation goes, and you will notice you are reading more slowly, and remembering more.