Why I’ve Actually Started Liking Writing In Books?! // Mini Hiatus + Annoucements

I’ve always been one of those people who really doesn’t like writing in books.

I mean, my books are precious children to me, and I just never understood why anyone would want to put marks on their beautiful white pages. But…recently, I’ve had a change of heart about this subject, so I thought I’d talk about it today. 😉

Also, if you noticed the title of this post, I’ll also be giving a few small announcements and be talking about the short hiatus I’m taking at the end of this post! Patience, grasshoppers. But first we’re going to talk about books, because books are amazing. XD

Without further ado, let’s get into the post.

As I said, I used to be one of those people that treat their books as humans.

Of course, I’m still against completely hurting books- how could I ever condone that? – but I’ve gotten more relaxed over the years. Nowadays, dog ears are acceptable (I actually dog ear quite a bit when I don’t have a bookmark handy), I think cracked spines are the sign of a well-loved book, and I’ve found that I love writing in them.

Today I’ll be sharing a few of the main reasons I’ve decided I like writing in books, as well as sharing a few examples of when writing in books was especially fun.

It can be so fun to read your own commentary!

I’m currently doing a reread of Percy Jackson books, because why not, and I just started The Lightening Thief. I read this book years ago for school assigned reading (back when school was fun…we even had a mythology fair after we read it where we all dressed up like certain gods or goddesses and I was Artemis) and when I read it, I annotated it.

Back then, annotating wasn’t anything complicated, it was more just “highlight characterization” or “write your thoughts.” So, that’s what I did. And now as I read my copy of The Lightening Thief, it’s so, so fun to read all the thoughts I wrote.

I love how since I’d already read the book, I wrote notes to Percy…XD

The face just cracks me up. Even though I’d already read it before I still reacted to the shocking news with a drawn emoji and exclamation points?!

We all know it’s so true.

I thought it was funny how the armor had sizes?! I don’t know if that’s how real armor is (and I’m sure I’ll never find out) or if it’s just something Rick Riordan put in to be funny.

It can make reading it more entertaining.

Not only can you look back at your commentary later, writing in books can also make reading it for the first time more fun.

For example, I recently (well, in the past few months) read My Dear Hamilton. It was a book written from Eliza Hamilton’s perspective, starting a little bit before she met Alexander Hamilton and going until long after his death.

Throughout the book, there were so many times I would read a line and instantly hear lyrics from the musical Hamilton in my head! Sometimes the lyrics would even be almost word for word in the book. Every time that happened, I wrote the song or a few lyrics from the song next to it. Here are just a few I took pictures of!

This is one of my favorite songs! They’re all my favorites. I love how now, if I reread this, I’ll instantly sing the song in my head.

I thought this book talked about Hamilton’s relationship with John Laurens in SO well, it was really interesting to see, since this is kind of the only line of Hamilton that really talks about it?

This one just fit perfectly, I mean…

Technically this was a letter with James Madison in the book, BUT IT WORKED SO PERFECTLY, OKAY.

All of this made me so happy to see, and just made the whole reading experience that much better!

It gives annotating books a more positive twist!

When I think of annotations, I automatically think a lot of negative things.

First of all, it makes me think of school reading which is another post for another time, but second of all…I just don’t like annotating. Sometimes I like to read without looking for a tone or theme or literary device, okay?!

But if you write little notes for yourself, it can actually be fun to write, and maybe, just maybe, the next time you have to annotate a book you won’t find it quite as horrible.

I hope that was slightly relatable?! I’m not saying that I’m going to start writing in all the books I read (especially since most of them are library books), but I do really enjoy it. I’m surprised to say it, but it just makes reading that much better! 🙂

And now we’ve come to the not-quite-as-fun part of this post, where I talk a little bit about why I’m going on a hiatus and when I’m coming back.

Since school has started back about a month ago, I’ve been so busy with homework, studying, dance, and just life in general. I feel like my latest posts haven’t been quite up to the usual standard I have for myself, seeing as they were written very last minute and were a little rushed. I was reading some of the comments on a post I (and Em!) did about balancing your life with blogging, and realized I…wasn’t following my own advice?!

I kept talking about how it was important to make time for what’s really important, and put aside blogging if it’s too much, but…there I was, hypocritically continuing to blog even though I knew it wasn’t 100% my best effort.

So, although I don’t really want to, because I love posting, I’m going to be taking a hiatus starting now and going until October 1st. I’ll be back in full force then! 😉

While I’m on hiatus, I’ll still be commenting on your posts (though maybe a little less frequently? I hope not though), responding to comments, etc. I’m not talking a hiatus from WordPress, just from the pressure of posting and always being on top of everything blogging-related. When I get back, I’ll be back to my Monday posting schedule. Even though this post isn’t on Monday…I’m sorry, but my schedule will already be messed up for this month anyway.

Since I was supposed to announce my giveaway winner on September 17th, and I’ll be on hiatus, I’ll be announcing it in my recap post on October 1st. So you can still enter up until then if you’re interested!

Whew, that was a lot. XD Thank you so much for reading, and for understanding why I won’t be posting for a little while. Don’t worry, I’ll be back very soon! I just want to make sure I’m putting out content I love.

Do you write in books? Why or why not? Have you ever felt like you needed a hiatus? I’d love to chat with you all in the comments.

Photo by Jess Watters on Unsplash >> Credits to the photographer of the image in my featured image!