Your Books are Tools - 18, 19 & 20
It is OK to Write Notes in Them
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Below is today’s post. It picks up from where I left off last time.
I say all of that to say this, you will benefit greatly by building a library of books by authors you have learned to trust. Real books. Books you can hold in your hand. Books where you can write in the margins of its pages. Books you can pull off the shelf as a resource.
And if you have built a library of books with notes in the margins, now you’ve got a place where you can go to find the details that lead you to your thinking. You will likely have in your head the gist of the author. You will know which books were the most convincing on a subject. But it’s when you pull it off the shelf that you will be able to see what was happening to you as you read. That is if you are not allergic to writing and underlining in books.
This picture is fairly typical of one of my books with my notes.
R.J. Rushdoony is a theologian who wrote many books, but it is said that he read about 250 to 300 books per year. And he would write the important thoughts he garnered in the back of each. This allowed him to use his library as a quick reference for his own writing.
Books are tools. They should be used to get your work done. However, you should not read and study as someone who is cold and utilitarian. You should read as someone who wishes to see the ways God builds beauty into all the things He has made. Truth and beauty always walk holding hands. And if a book does not effect a positive change or help buttress a good and godly aspect of life, then take note of its ailment. Do your best to evaluate whether a book has served to enhance God’s good and beautiful kingdom or whether it has gotten in the way of it.
You must prune your library as it grows. As you mature, you will decide that some of the books you’ve read served you better than others. I suggest you keep the best and get rid of the worst. There is only so much room in your home. The library I built is around 1,500 books. This is probably too large, especially if you ask my wife. I have gotten rid of at least half as many along the way. And, no, I have not read them all.
I mark my books, marginalia everywhere, and when I go back and reread them a few years later I am surprised at what I thought was important back then to what I am underlining and noting as important today. It will be interesting when my kids read through some of my books.