Minnie's Fiction Addiction

Some readers treat their books like sacred objects, carefully preserved and kept spotless. Others see the margins as blank space begging to be filled with thoughts, doodles, and underlines. The question is: do you annotate, or do you keep your books pristine?

Minnie: Team Annotator ✏️📚

Books aren’t museum pieces. They’re companions. And companions should carry the marks of your journey together.

When I annotate, I’m having a conversation with the text. I underline the sentences that make me gasp, I scribble hearts next to lines that break me, I argue in the margins when I disagree. Later, flipping back through, it’s like revisiting old diary entries, a record of how I felt in that exact moment.

A pristine book might be pretty, but an annotated one is alive. It holds not just the author’s words, but mine too. It’s a time capsule of my thoughts, a map of my emotional journey through the story.

So yes, my books are messy. They’re dog-eared, highlighted, covered in ink. But they’re also uniquely mine.

Tess: Team Pristine Collector ✨📚

Books are art. And you don’t scribble all over a painting.

For me, part of the joy of reading is holding something beautiful in my hands — crisp pages, unbroken spines, a cover that looks as perfect as the day I bought it. Annotating feels like defacing that beauty. Once you’ve written in it, you can’t go back.

A book in pristine condition can be loaned to a friend, displayed proudly on a shelf, or sold and passed on to another reader. A book filled with someone else’s underlines and notes? It’s cluttered, distracting, and ruins the reading experience.

I don’t need to see my reactions in the margins to remember how a story made me feel. The book itself is enough. For me, respecting the author’s words means leaving the pages untouched.

Final Thoughts

Minnie turns books into personal journals, layering her own story on top of the author’s. Tess treats them as treasures to be preserved, artifacts of the author’s vision. Neither approach is wrong — it all comes down to whether you want your books to reflect just the author, or a little bit of yourself too.

About the Writers

Minnie is a chaotic mood reader who loves annotating her books with doodles, hearts, and sarcastic margin notes. For her, a well-loved book is one with bent spines and ink-stained pages.

Tess is a disciplined list-maker and proud book collector. She believes books deserve to be kept flawless, and the sharp crack of a brand-new spine is one of her favorite sounds.