Seven Essential Books for Understanding Annotation

Whether marginal notes scrawled in pencil, underlined passages in pen, or digital highlights layered with commentary, annotation elevates reading from passive absorption to active engagement.

“The Young Scholar" by Evert Collier (c. 1680s)

To annotate is to think aloud in the margins. It is to transform a private act of reading into a visible record of interpretation, struggle, enthusiasm, or disagreement. Whether marginal notes scrawled in pencil, underlined passages in pen, or digital highlights layered with commentary, annotation elevates reading from passive absorption to active engagement. Across the centuries, scholars, students, poets, and novelists have treated the page as a space not just for consumption but for dialogue. These seven books—ranging from classic manuals to historical studies to literary experiments—reveal annotation in all its complexity: as method, artifact, argument, and art.

1. How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren

This foundational guide, originally published in 1940 and revised in 1972, teaches that good reading is not merely about understanding words, but about engaging with ideas. Adler and Van Doren outline a four-level model of reading—from elementary to syntopical—and at every level, they insist on the importance of annotation. Writing in books, they argue, is not a desecration but a declaration of ownership: marking up a book shows you’ve wrestled with it, questioned it, and made it your own.

Their approach is both philosophical and practical. Annotation is not random scribbling but a system of engagement: underlining key arguments, jotting questions in the margin, drawing arrows between ideas. For Adler and Van Doren, annotation sharpens critical thinking and builds intellectual discipline. Readers who follow their method learn not only how to read more attentively, but how to think more rigorously. The book remains a timeless advocate for annotation as a central act of education.

2. Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books by H.J. Jackson

H.J. Jackson's Marginalia is a sweeping historical study that examines how readers from antiquity to the modern day have used the margins of books as sites of engagement. Drawing from a wide array of literary, religious, and personal texts, Jackson explores the psychology of why readers write in books—and what those markings reveal about their minds and cultures. Her narrative is scholarly, but deeply human, as she uncovers the intimacy and idiosyncrasy of marginalia.

Jackson treats annotation not just as a reading habit but as a literary and social phenomenon. From the glosses of medieval monks to the jottings of romantic poets, she reveals how annotations can be devotional, rebellious, playful, or deeply serious. This book invites us to see readers not as silent consumers but as participants in a centuries-long conversation. Jackson’s work makes a persuasive case for the enduring value of marginalia—not only as a way to understand texts, but to understand readers themselves.

3. Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England by William H. Sherman

William H. Sherman’s Used Books dives into the world of Renaissance England, where books were expensive, literacy was on the rise, and annotation was a common part of reading culture. With meticulous research into library archives, personal collections, and estate inventories, Sherman reconstructs how readers of the time interacted with their books—not just reading them, but writing in them, often extensively. These marginal notes, he argues, offer a vital window into the intellectual life of the period.

Sherman goes beyond merely cataloging marginalia; he interprets it. He shows how annotation could serve as a mode of learning, a space for theological reflection, or even a subtle form of resistance. By situating annotation within broader cultural and religious currents, Sherman reveals how the margin was a place of both conformity and dissent. Used Books is an essential resource for understanding annotation not just as a private act, but as a historically situated and politically charged one.

4. “A Weapon for Readers” by Tim Parks (2014 Essay, The New York Review of Books)

In this short but powerful essay, novelist and critic Tim Parks offers a personal meditation on the value of annotation. He recounts his own evolution as a reader—from youthful reverence for pristine books to an unapologetic embrace of writing in the margins. For Parks, annotation is not defacement but freedom: it liberates the reader from the passivity of merely consuming a text. In annotating, one asserts judgment, memory, even rebellion.

Parks argues that annotation transforms reading into a dynamic encounter. Instead of being guided solely by the author’s logic, the reader becomes a co-participant in meaning-making. His reflections resonate especially in an age of distraction, where deep reading is often lost to digital skimming. Parks champions annotation as a mode of reclaiming attention and asserting agency. The essay is brief, but it offers a profound case for why writing in books is one of the most vital things a serious reader can do.

5. The Footnote: A Curious History by Anthony Grafton

Anthony Grafton's The Footnote is both erudite and playful—a scholarly history that traces the evolution of the footnote as a form of annotation and intellectual self-defense. While the footnote may seem like a dry academic convention, Grafton reveals its colorful past, showing how historians and scholars used it to assert authority, settle scores, and build reputations. In Grafton's telling, the footnote is no afterthought; it is a deeply strategic and expressive form.

The book is particularly illuminating for understanding how annotation moved from the margins into more formal scholarly practice. Grafton situates the footnote within a broader history of learned annotation, connecting it to traditions of commentary, gloss, and textual exegesis. His wit and depth make this book a pleasure to read even for non-specialists. For anyone interested in how annotation helps shape knowledge itself, The Footnote is a landmark work.

6. S. by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst

S. is a novel like no other—an audacious experiment in form that makes annotation the heart of its storytelling. The book presents Ship of Theseus, a fictional novel by a fictional author, surrounded by handwritten marginalia from two readers trying to solve a literary mystery. Their annotations include notes, postcards, newspaper clippings, and other ephemera, turning the act of reading into a kind of puzzle. The result is a multi-layered narrative where story, reader response, and commentary are inseparably intertwined.

This work reimagines annotation as not just response, but creation. As the two readers converse in the margins, their relationship evolves, revealing secrets, forming theories, and interpreting events. The annotations don’t explain the story—they are the story. S. invites readers to read with their hands, their eyes, and their imaginations fully engaged. For those who want to see how annotation can be elevated to a storytelling device in its own right, this novel is a thrilling demonstration.

7. The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age by Sven Birkerts

Sven Birkerts’ elegiac meditation on reading in the digital age offers a powerful defense of traditional, immersive reading—and of annotation as one of its most meaningful practices. Written in the mid-1990s but prescient in its concerns, The Gutenberg Elegies explores how technological changes affect our inner lives, our memory, and our ability to reflect. Birkerts worries that the shift from page to screen threatens the deep, concentrated attention that serious reading—and annotating—requires.

Throughout the book, Birkerts returns to the value of slowing down, rereading, and making marks—acts that signal not just consumption, but meditation. He sees annotation as a way to anchor thoughts, draw connections, and build a personal relationship with a text. In a world of ephemeral content and endless scrolling, The Gutenberg Elegies remains a stirring call to reclaim the depth of experience that comes with a pencil in hand and a book in lap.

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These seven books reveal that annotation is far more than marginal. Whether in service of learning, memory, protest, authorship, or simply attention, writing in books turns reading into an act of meaning-making. In the words of Adler, “Full ownership of a book... comes 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.”

Michael S. Rose, a leader in the classical education movement, is author of The Art of Being Human, Ugly As Sin and other books. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications including The Wall Street Journal, Epoch Times, New York Newsday, National Review, and The Dallas Morning News.