I just recently, finally, began annotating my books and dog-earing pages after having run the gamut of other annotative methods--taking notes on my phone, taking notes in a corresponding notebook for the text, using index markers/sticky flags, etc. etc. Direct annotation is by far the best and most effective method I've found unless I intend on conducting an ultra close reading of a text, in which case I will take detailed notes in a notebook, in addition to annotating the pages directly.

A sort of paranoid fear of distorting my subsequent readings of a book has always made me hesitate marking them directly--a second reading is often a chance to catch subtitles you missed the first time around--I've always feared that having my annotations screaming at me while reading would render finding these subtitles impossible, those slippery nuggets making their escape under rivers of pen ink.

Ultimately, I couldn't deny myself the inherent use-value of direct annotation--so it won out over my fear. Yes, it's true that my annotations will perhaps make me miss things I otherwise might've noticed on a second read, but they'll also remind me of ideas I'd previously had which might've otherwise been lost to time, or are more difficult to parse out and re-associate with a given piece of text using the other methods.

So I accede to the wisdom of DFW, a great lot of famous scribblers, and Tim Parks; I read with pen in hand and ink on page.