Yes I mark mine up, surprised so many here don’t. I used to be a person that never did, but heard some people on podcasts highly recommend it, and I also began wanting to take notes. I think it adds value to the book on a re-read if you do it cleanly. I underline the first and last word of the highlight, with a curly bracket in the margin to indicate the area (sometimes a comment added), and a small plus sign in the top right corner to indicate which pages are noted. Then I can flip through when finished and dictate the notes to my computer. But they also make sticky tabs for page notes if you don’t wanna mark books up. I do have some visual or big coffee table books, like Poor Charlie’s Almanack, that I don’t want to mark up inside.

The first thing my brother does when he buys a book is cracks the spine 🤢

Haha, it used to bother me but now I’ve started just using my books, there’s not really any sense in trying to keep them in perfect condition, I’d rather be able to throw it into a backpack and read it on a beach 🙂

I dogear pages, highlight, and write notes in pen or pencil.

Books aren’t permanent, and most decay and degrade within a couple decades. It doesn’t matter if you make marks.

I usually buy used physical copies, and I like to see the marks other people have made.

I want to be the person who reads attentively, underlining things and scrawling notes in the margins, then going back to reread years later, or share books with others who do the same. But I always get too caught up in the story, or just cant bring myself to do it when I do remember. It also slows down my pace of reading quite a lot, and I’m not that fast to begin with.

It doesn’t help that, as a librarian, the people who write in library books are the worst!

I always want to, but I just can’t stand to see the clean book merged with my shitty handwriting

If it’s my own book then yes – I’ll underline and make notes (but always with pencils, never pens!)

I also use dog ears, that’s just how I roll!

No. However, I use stickers to mark parts I want to get back to and that I find inspiring. I also write on stickers.