Pagkatapos ng ABNKKBSNPLAko?!

, Bakit Baliktad Magbasa ng Libro ang mga

Pilipino?, Ang Paboritong Libro ni Hudas, at Alamat ng Gubat, ipinagpapatuloy
ni Bob Ong sa librong ito ang kanyang ikalimang pagkakamali--ang magkwento
tungkol sa sarili n'yang mga libro, bagay na di ginagawa ng mga matitinong
manunulat. Ito ang Stainless Longganisa, mga kwento ng nagtataeng ballpen sa
kahalagahan ng pagbabasa, pag-abot ng mga pangarap, at at tamang praan nG
pagsususlat,

Good readers, reading for blood, know how much it helps to read armed
with a pencil.

Mr. Adler tells how, when, and why to use one.

You know you have to read "between the lines" to get the most out of
anything. I want to persuade you to do something equally important in the
course of your reading. I want to persuade you to "write between the lines."
Unless you do, you are not likely to do the most efficient kind of reading.

I contend, quite bluntly, that marking up a book is not an act of mutilation

but of love.

You shouldn't mark up a book that isn't yours. Librarians (or your friends)
who lend you books expect you to keep them clean, and you should. If you
decide that I am right about the usefulness of marking books, you will have to
buy them. Most of the world's great books are available today, in reprint
editions, at less than a dollar.

There are two ways in which one can own a book. The first is the property
right you establish by paying for it, just as you pay for clothes and furniture.
This act of purchase is only the prelude to possession. Full ownership comes
only when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make
yourself a part of it is by writing in it. An illustration may make the point clear.
You buy a beefsteak and transfer it from the most important sense until you
consume it into your bloodstream. I am arguing that books, too, must be
absorbed in your bloodstream to do you any good.

Confusion about what it means to own a book leads people to a false

reverence for a paper, binding, and type--a respect for the physical thing that
it is possible for a man to acquire the idea, to possess the beauty, which a
great book contains, without staking his claim by pasting his bookplate inside
the cover. Having a fine library doesn't prove that its owner has a mind
enriched by books; it proves nothing more than that he, his father, or his wife,
was rich enough to buy them.

There are three kinds of book owners. The first has all the standard sets and
best-sellers--unread, untouched. (This deluded individual owns wood pulp and
ink, not books.) The second has a great many books--a few of them read
through, most of them dipped into, but all of them as clean and shiny as the
day they were bought. (This person would probably like to make books his own,
but is restrained by a false respect for their physical appearance.) The third
has a few books or many--every one of them dog-eared and dilapidated, shaken
and loosened by continual use, marked and scribbled in from front to back.
(This man owns books.)

Is it false respect, you may ask, to preserve intact and unblemished a

beautifully printed book, an elegantly bound edition? Of course not. I'd no more
scribble all over a first edition of Paradise Lost than I'd give my baby a set of
crayons and an original Rembrandt! I wouldn't mark up a painting or a statue.
Its soul, so to speak, is inseparable from its body. And the beauty of a rare
edition or of a richly manufactured volume is like that of a painting or a statue.

But the soul of a book can be separated from its body. A book is more like
the score of a place of music than it is like a painting. No great musician
confuses a symphony with the printed sheets of music. Arturo Toscanini reveres
Brahms, but Toscanini's core of the C-minor Symphony is so thoroughly marked
up that no one but the maestro himself can read it. The reason why a great
conductor makes notations on his musical scores--marks them up again and
again each time he returns to study them--is the reason why you should mark
your books. If your respect for magnificent binding or typography gets in the
way, buy yourself a cheap edition and pay your respects to the author.

Why is marking up a book indispensable to reading? First, it keeps you

awake. (And I don't mean merely conscious; I mean wide awake.) In the second
place, reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in
words, spoken or written. The marked book is usually the thought-through
book. Finally, writing helps you remember the thoughts you had, or the
thoughts the author expressed. Let me develop these three points.

If reading is to accomplish anything more than passing time, it must be

active. You can't let your eyes glide across the lines of a book and come up
with an understanding of what you have read. Now an ordinary piece of light
fiction, like say, Gone With The Wind, doesn't require the most active kind of
reading. The books you read for pleasure can be read in a state of relaxation
and nothing is lost. But a great book rich in ideas and beauty, a book that
raises and tries to answer great fundamental questions, demands the most
active reading of which you are capable. You don't absorb the ideas of John
Dewey the way you absorb the crooning of Mr. Vallee. You have to reach for
them. That you cannot do while you're asleep.

If, when you've finished reading a book, the pages are filled with your
notes, you know that you read actively. The most famous active reader of great
books I know is President Hutchins of the University of Chicago. He also has the
hardest schedule of business activities of any man I know. He invariably reads
with a pencil, and sometimes, when he picks up a book and pencil in the
evening, he finds himself, instead of making intelligent notes, drawing what he
calls "caviar factories" on the margins. When that happens, he puts the book
down. He knows he's too tired to read, and he's just wasting time.

But, you may ask, why is writing necessary? Well, the physical act of
writing, with your own hand, brings words and sentences more sharply before
your mind and preserves them better in your memory. To set down your
reaction to important words and sentences you have read, and the questions
they have raised in your mind, is to preserve those reactions and sharpen those
questions.

Even if you wrote on a scratch pad, and threw the paper away when you
had finished writing, your grasp of the book would be surer. But you don't have
to throw the paper away. The margins (top and bottom, as well as side), the
end-papers, the very space between the lines, are all available. They aren't
sacred. And, best of all, your marks and notes become an integral part of the
book and stay there forever. You can pick up the book the following week or
year, and there are all your points of agreement, disagreement, doubt, and
inquiry. It's like resuming an interrupted conversation with the advantage of
being able to pick up where you left off.

And that is exactly what reading a book should be: a conversation between
you and the author. Presumably he knows more about the subject than you do;
naturally, you'll have the proper humility as you approach him. But don't let
anybody tell you that a reader is supposed to be solely on the receiving end.
Understanding is a two-way operation; learning doesn't consist in being an
empty receptacle. The learner has to question himself and question the
teacher. He even has to argue with the teacher, once he understands what the
teacher is saying. And marking a book is literally an expression of your
differences, or agreements of opinion, with the author.

There are all kinds of devices for marking a book intelligently and fruitfully.
Here's the way I do it:

• Underlining: of major points, of important or forceful statements.

• Vertical lines at the margin: to emphasize a statement already

underlined.

• Star, asterisk, or other doo-dad at the margin: to be used sparingly, to

emphasize the ten or twenty most important statements in the book.
(You may want to fold the bottom corner of each page on which you use
such marks. It won't hurt the sturdy paper on which most modern books
are printed, and you will be able to take the book off the shelf at any
time and, by opening it at the folded-corner page, refresh your
recollection of the book.)

• Numbers in the margin: to indicate the sequence of points the author

makes in developing a single argument.

• Numbers of other pages in the margin: to indicate where else in the

book the author made points relevant to the point marked; to tie up the
ideas in a book which, though they may be separated by many pages,
belong together.

• Circling of key words or phrases.

• Writing in the margin, or at the top or bottom of the page for the sake
of: recording questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage raised in
your mind: reducing a complicated discussion to a simple statement;
recording the sequence of major points right through the books. I use
the end-papers at the back of the book to make a personal index of the
author's points in the order of their appearance.

• The front end-papers are, to me, the most important. Some people
reserve them for a fancy bookplate. I reserve them for fancy thinking.
After I have finished reading the book and making my personal index on
the back end-papers, I turn to the front and try to outline the book, not
page by page, or point by point (I've already done that at the back), but
as an integrated structure, with a basic unity and an order of parts. This
outline is, to me, the measure of my understanding of the work.
 • If you're a die-hard anti-book-marker, you may object that the margins,
the space between the lines, and the end-papers don’t give you room
enough. All right. How about using a scratch pad slightly smaller than
the page size of a book--so that the edges of the sheets won't protrude?
Make your index, outlines, and even your notes on the pad, and then
insert these sheets permanently inside the front and back covers of the
book.

Or, you may say that this business of marking books is going to slow up your
reading. it probably will. That's one of the reasons for doing it. Most of us have
been taken in by the notion that speed of reading is a measure of our
intelligence. There is no such thing as the right speed for intelligent reading.
Some things should be read quickly and effortlessly, and some should be read
slowly and even laboriously. The sign of intelligence in reading is the ability to
read different things differently according to their worth. In the case of good
books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but
rather how many can get through you -- how many you can make your own. A
few friends are better than a thousand acquaintances. If this be your aim, as it
should be, you will not be impatient if it takes more time and effort to read a
great book than it does a newspaper.

You may have one final objection to marking books. You can't lend them to
your friends because nobody else can read them without being distracted by
your notes. Furthermore, you won't want to lend them because a marked copy
is a kind of intellectual diary, and lending it is almost like giving your mind
away.

If your friend wishes to read your Plutarch's Lives, Shakespeare, or The

Federalist Papers, tell him gently but firmly to buy a copy. You will lend him
your car or your coat -- but your books are as much a part of you as your head
or your heart.

From Mortimer J. Adler's How to Love a Book (1940).

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