LatestAnnotation
The Margin Is Where the Reading Happens
A clean book is a book you have not finished. On pencils, arguments, and reading with your hands.
Read the essay6 min read
Everything else worth reading
Browse every essay
Method
Keep a Commonplace Book
The four-hundred-year-old habit that beats every note-taking app you have ever abandoned.
7 min read
Attention
Slow Mornings, Fmmewer Tabs
Protecting the first hour of the day, and what it quietly costs when you do not.
5 min read
Writing
How to Finish a First Draft
Finishing is a separate skill from writing, and almost nobody practises it on purpose.
8 min read
Reading
A Shelf of Books You Have Actually Read
Against the aspirational library, in favour of a smaller and considerably more honest one.
5 min read
Reading
Notes on Rereading
The second time through, the book has not changed. You have, and that is the whole point.
6 min read
Who writes this
Elena Marsh
An editor by trade and a compulsive annotator by habit. Marginalia collects what I would otherwise scribble inside a paperback and lose: notes on reading, on keeping a notebook, and on finishing things.
A letter at the end of every month
The new essays, plus a handful of passages worth copying out. Nothing else.