“Francis took out the half-finished bulk of his own book, eight inches thick, an A4 notebook with black binding and three green Pentel pens. He’d always used those Pentel pens; he liked the flow of the ink-soaked ball under pressure.”

Thanks for the link, Emily. I can’t wait to try one. Perhaps this is the moment for me to go boldly forth with a pen…

And thanks for your comments about the blog!

–cynthia

Why, I’m so glad you asked! I use these, in the micro-point variety. I love the way their ink spreads richly and easily onto all different papers. Plus, they were my the pens my dad used when I was growing up, so there is a family connection there, as well as the force of long habit. I have a bit of environmental guilt for refusing to invest in a more permanent, refillable pen, but I just can’t bring myself to give these up.

You have a lovely blog, by the way. I’ve really been enjoying exploring, and I’ll definitely be back.

Thanks, also, for mentioning those unexpected connections and the threads of themes as reasons to stop, reread, underline, and also note with a word or two.

Nice to hear from you. Hope you’ll be back.

I mark things for all the reasons you’ve listed, as well as a few others. Sometimes I see an unexpected connection to something else I’ve been reading or thinking about, or a passage reminds me in a less-than-obvious way of another theme or plotline in the same book. Usually I mark these and write a little note to myself in the margin, so I won’t forget. Sometimes I’m trying to articulate to myself a specific quality about the book – the way it combines two seemingly incongruous approaches, for example – and I come across a passage that exemplifies that quality, so I mark it for later thought, or to share with other people.

Thought-provoking post!

Yay! It’s nice to know I’m not the only crazy one.

And I used to copy favorite passages into a small notebook–on loose-leaf paper so I could alphabetize by author, so I would have some chance of locating the passage later–but now I put my favorite passages here.

Thanks for adding to the conversation, Annie!

Lisa, I agree. My reaction to the stories in Don’t Cry was mixed. Out of the 10, I loved 4, thought 5 were ok, and disliked 1. But there were sentences in almost every story that made me stop and go back to reread. I haven’t read Bad Behavior but am adding it to my list.

Love the post-it flags and highlighting–yellow, I presume?

Thanks for your comments!

I don’t write in books, but I do highlight passages I want to come back to and I mark pages with little post-it flags.

The examples you’ve given are exactly the types of things I tend to mark. It’s those passages where I find myself nodding my head and thinking yes, yes that’s exactly what it’s like that I tend to re-read the most often.

Unique and perfect description gets me too. On both counts I’ve used up a lot of highlighter ink with Proust and Bellow. They both amaze me.