You be the judge: should my girlfriend stop annotating her books?

3 hours ago 4

The prosecution: Charlie

It breaks my immersion in the stories – like when someone says ‘This next bit is so good’

Julie can’t read without a pen in her hand. She writes all over every book: underlining, writing over things, crossing things out. When she explains it to people, she makes it sound fun. She says it’s because she’s an author – her first book is due out this year. She makes it sound like she’s adding quality, writerly insights to the pages, but it’s actually just random connective comments like “lol” written in the margins.

I’ve asked her to stop as it breaks my immersion in the stories. It’s like when someone says “This next bit is so good” when you’re watching a film. She doesn’t write spoilers and some of her comments are interesting, but they still distract you from the story. It also denies me the opportunity of a relationship with the writer of the book. Julie is a writer herself, so should value this. We read the same books, but I have to buy an extra copy because I can’t bear reading hers. In our small flat – and in a cost of living crisis – we have too many books and too little space. We can’t afford to keep buying books. She uses a pen for her annotations, which makes it even harder to ignore. She should ask herself: “Is this a book that Charlie wants to read?”

I am in a book club and I ask Julie for recommendations, but we can’t lend books to friends because of her annotations. Julie says I shouldn’t care about this as she buys her own books. She accuses me of skim-reading and said it shouldn’t affect me, but I’m a deep reader. It hurts when she dismisses my feelings about this.

We’ve been together for two years and it’s always been an issue. She says she wants us to read more of the same books but her annotations put me off.

Reading books covered in graffiti is not fun. It’s a bit like how kids shouldn’t put toys in their mouth if others want to play with them. However, I know I will have to continue reading Julie’s books with the annotations because she won’t change.

The defence: Julie

He says what I write doesn’t make sense, but it does to me – I’m a writer, it’s part of my work

I get that it’s distracting if I underline or write a comment in a book, but I shouldn’t have to justify my actions if it’s a book I’ve bought.

My own book is due out later this year and this is how I work. I don’t think Charlie and me have to share everything if it’s work-related. I don’t say to him: “Stop doing that thing for your job, so I can make more use of it.”

Charlie says what I write in the books doesn’t make sense, but it does to me. Annotating books is part of my work. When I’m struggling to write, reading a book really helps me. I’ll often circle or underline words like “and”, “but”, “she” and “he”. When I write in the margins, it is sometimes as brief as “lol”; others it’s an insight, such as “but what about the impact on her daughter?”

I’m an avid reader, whereas Charlie isn’t. He is in a book club with his friends but only reads for that. He skim-reads and usually we read different books. He says I shouldn’t annotate my books in case he wants to read one, but I can count on one hand the amount of times our book choices might have overlapped.

On holiday once, Charlie borrowed a book of mine and said: “This is quite a distracting thing you do.” But I don’t think annotating is unusual. I always see people writing in books on the train or on Instagram. Charlie says we need to buy two copies of each book but I disagree. He could just go and borrow one from the library.

Recently, he asked to borrow a book. Before I lent it to him, I showed him the writing inside and he said it was fine and readable, so it’s clearly not a consistent issue.

Charlie says we can’t lend annotated books to friends but I’ve never given away a book, so that’s not an issue. I like to go back and re-read them, and as we live near my parents, we have space to keep all my books there. I shouldn’t have to change the way I read. I could write in pencil to appease Charlie, but he said it wouldn’t make a difference to his reading experience.

Names have been changed

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The jury of Guardian readers

Julie’s habit might help her, but it’s preventing Charlie from enjoying books. If she wants to annotate them, she could use sticky notes or page-marker tabs, which would also make it easy for her to find the sections she finds inspiring or interesting.
Iris, 28

I would never write in a book myself, but this is obviously important to Julie’s enjoyment of reading. Charlie wants to stop her annotating “in case” he decides to read the book after her. If they plan to share a book in future, he should read it first.
Tricia, 64

Books are sacrosanct. It is allowable to mark up one’s own textbooks, but never acceptable to write on someone else’s prose – and certainly not if it’s little more than graffiti.
Andrew, 70

I was pro-Charlie when he said they both read the same books, but Julie denied that. So she’s entitled to mess up her own books if she must. Personally, I’ve underlined etc when researching, but otherwise I respect authors too much to deface their work.
Peter, 75

I see how Julie’s notes could distract Charlie, but reading is a personal, private activity and everyone interacts with books differently, especially the likes of Julie, who is a writer herself. They’re lucky to have a library nearby – that sounds like a solution.
Victoria, 59