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Craft

In Praise of Marginalia

Jonas Reyes · July 18, 2026

In Praise of Marginalia

Three obsessive annotators on pens, systems, and the notes they will never erase.

Marginalia is a conversation across time. From Coleridge's furious footnotes to your grandmother's pencilled stars, the notes we leave behind are a second book inside the first.

We interviewed three annotators — a poet, a judge, and a teenager — about their systems, their pens, and the one note they will never erase.

Close-up of an open book showing textured pages
Slow pages reward slow eyes. — from the Literary Canvas reading room

That is the whole of our philosophy in one shelf: fewer books, better chosen, read all the way through. If this essay sent you back to your own stack with fresh eyes, it did its job — and we'd love to hear which book you picked up first.