on coming up with an absurd method to think I have put things in order
I have always been an active reader. I literally leave marks on the books I read. It started subtly. My respect for a book, as a precious object, was enough for me not to want to violate it with a blunt mark. So I use to leave a dot in pencil at the edge of the line or lines I found interesting. Soon, I discovered, when I went back to look for the line I sort of remembered having read and marked, I noticed that it took an enormous effort to find the tiny dots I had made while reading the book. Soon after, I got over my fear of vandalising a book and started underlining the entire phrase or phrases I was interested in. First with pencil but a couple of books after I did it with a thin pen. Now, I still use a thin but in colours. I have learned that for me it is more important to be able to go over a book and quickly find those interesting ideas I had marked, than is my fear of the book turning ugly with all those black, red and even green lines all over it. I remember, during my years at the school of architecture, finding it completely offensive looking at other students underlining
with a phosphorescent marker in their books. Now, I find pleasure to browse through my own books and finding entire paragraphs underlined (if only in not as offensive manner as a phosphorescent marker). It is as if the more lines (of notation) fill the space between lines (of text) the more the interesting I find the reading. With books that I have gone back to re- read, lines of different colours accumulate to show how my interest in what I find interesting has not only changed but that with each reading I find more and more phrases and ideas interesting in books I already found interesting enough to re-read. With most of the books I decide to re-read, I end up underlining as many new phrases as I had underlined on the first reading. It almost seems as if I am reading and discovering for the first time, and when I re-read a phrase I had previously underlined, I cannot help but linger a bit on it and reflect what kind of state I must have been in, or with what things in mind did I read that particular book when I decided to mark that particular sentence.
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on site review 40 : the architect’s library :: books, shelves, collections
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