I’ve recently started marking my books as I read them. Only with sticky notes, however, I am not yet brave enough to mark raw with highlighters and pens.
Today I just want to share a few of my pink and orange tabs and blue lines, the book is mostly filled with yellow lines in the beginning.
Here are some of my highlights from first few chapters of The Caves of Steel by Issac Asimov.
Spoiler warning!

__ Baley’s eagerness to here about the Spacers dying, page 6 __
There was not enough established tension to make that line not come off as incredibly lacking in empathy. This is what makes me believe that Asimov designed Baley not to be liked at all.
__ Baley meets Daneel, page 23 __
It wasn’t hard to see it coming but it was still funny for Baley to feel humbled by the presence of a robot who he was just whining about. It was a good show of the human’s insecurities when it comes to the robots, adding to that pre-existing tension.
__ Daneel threatens to shoot people at the shoe shop, page 33 __
My next favourite marked scene is the one where Daneel interrogates the woman at the shoe shop and then threatens to shoot anyone who touches him. Mood. It was fun to watch him tear her pride down and then basically say get f***ed to everyone else that wanted to continue to make an issue out of it.
__ Jessie’s name, page 41 __
I get that it’s supposed to form part of the reason why she ended up in the situation she was in but I just found it boring and pointless and merely a passage for Baley to criticise her. It was weird. Perhaps I lack the context of the discussion that was being had but I didn’t see it as necessary and it felt like a bunch of bible information crammed into the novel that never really came full circle.
‘Well, now,’ said Baley, feeling his temper slipping, ‘if you had let yourself be waited on, you’d have been out of here by now. You’re just making trouble for nothing. Come on now.’
Page 30
There was something incredibly funny about him being annoyed in a retail situation.
‘I think you are wrong, partner Elijah. My briefing on human characteristics here among the people of Earth includes the information that, unlike the men of the Outer Worlds, they are trained from birth to accept authority. Apparently this is the result of your way of living. One man, representing authority firmly enough, was quite sufficient, as I proved. Your own desire for a squad car was only an expression, really, of your almost instinctive wish for superior authority to take responsibility out of your hands. On my own world, I admit that what I did would have been most unjustified.’
Page 36
Mic drop. Daneel 2, Baley 0.
The girl’s face was oval and not precisely pretty, mostly because of a slightly overlarge nose. Her dress was demure and she wore her light brown hair in a series of ringlets over her forehead.
Page 39
I think this is self-explanatory why I didn’t like the line. There were a lot of strange littering of backhanded descriptions of the women in this book, primarily being Jessie because there was only one or two other unnamed side characters who were also women.
‘It is not your custom to eavesdrop?’
Page 55
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