by Lewis Faulkner (If you’d like to guest post here, please check out our guidelines.)

When my daughter was young, and was just beginning to read, she’d watch me while I was reading.

She’d come over, snuggle up, and say, “Don’t write in books.”

She was reminding me of what I had recently said to her: “Don’t underline in books.”

Her books were from the public library.

Mine, however, were purchased.

For the most part.

I have to admit that I’ve lightly underlined in books with a pencil—yes, books from the public library. I rationalized this to myself in the following way: people don’t read much anyway, and it looks like I’m the only person who’s checked this book out of the library in the last twenty years. So, who’s gonna know? Besides, if I come back and look at this book again, I can find the interesting stuff easier. And, I’ll be helping the students who don’t like to read find the highlights.

Quite self-delusional of me.

During one poor period of my life, I re-checked out one particular book so many times that, at last, the librarian looked at me over her bifocals, and asked me why I didn’t just buy it.

And I felt so bad, I did buy it.

It doesn’t stop there. I actually created a set of secret abbreviations that I use when I write in books.

As an ultimate atrocity, I used to underline in a Bible I owned. Kind of my own red-letter edition, but with more colors than red. The underlined passages resembled Joseph’s coat of many colors. Another church-going adult, who observed me in the act, tried to tell me the same thing my daughter did, even though I did own this particular Bible. The observer explained that I was marking up something sacred, whether I owned it or not. It was the equivalent of writing graffiti on a something Holy. But, then or now, I wasn’t convinced.

Personally, I consider underlining in a book, even the Bible, the ultimate compliment.

Such an atrocity says many things about the underliner.

1. I cared enough to read the work carefully.
2. I liked the passage so much that I wanted to be able to find it quickly when I came back to look at it again.
3. I considered those particular words important.

Once, I took a novel to a book signing. The author saw all the underlining I’d done in his book [this was Pat Conroy, by the way]. For an instant, I thought the discovery might make him angry. He did ask why I had underlined so much in his novel, though. I told him that I wanted to study some of the passages. I wanted to see how he’d created a particular emotional effect. Reverse-engineer something that he’d done so perfectly. His only response was a smile. Was he was flattered? I’ll never know because, at that exact instant, an employee of the bookstore told me to move on; I’d taken up too much of Mr. Conroy’s precious time, and there was a line of fans behind me that was longer than the opening day at a Star Wars movie.

I’ve often hypothesized from this event that maybe Mr. Conroy had done the same thing himself, and the smile was an acknowledgement that we were both in the greatest secret club ever invented—people who love to learn.

More self-delusion, probably.

So write in books!

Even mine.

Especially mine.

Check out Lewis Faulkner’s website for more info.

Image: sxc.hu