The idea of writing in books might make you cringe. Or, you may find making notes, highlighting, and underlining is your preferred way of interacting with a text. I was firmly in the anti-annotation crowd until a few years ago when I read an article much like this one elevating the role a reader takes on when annotating. A passive reader simply takes in what is on the page, but an annotator is communing with the text; their notes, asterisks, and underlines are a way of conversing with the author. Once I started to think of it this way, the idea of annotating a book felt much less blasphemous and…