A couple weeks back, I was sitting in one of my favorite classes. This particular English class features a lot of group work, and I belong to a group of four stellar individuals — a recent string of Facebook messages regarding our mid-term study session was, in fact, titled, “To (quite possibly) my favorite people…”

We’re really close — as we edit each other’s papers with the red pen of love and compassion, we also taunt the smartest girl with the scorn and derision of respect and reverence.

On this particular day, our study session host happened to reach into my messenger bag, pulling out, with a look of shock and horrified amusement, the CliffsNotes to Oliver Twist (I hesitate to add, “by Charles Dickens,” since the CliffsNotes are clearly not by Dickens).

Being the student least likely to complete reading assignments or bring homework to class, I am not sure how this surprised anyone — it’s not as if Oliver Twist was even on our course reading list. He held it aloft, jaw agape, for the class to see, and I had to laugh it off, sputtering that I use CliffsNotes as a last resort, and only for lame classes.

However, the course for which I purchased these helpful yellow-and-black pamphlets of bliss is also a favorite class. The truth is, while Dickens is yet another of my favorites, and I would like very little more than to read Oliver Twist in its entirety, I work nearly full-time at one job, and more than make up the difference with the other. That, along with a full course load and a shockingly long-lived New Year’s resolution to visit the IMA on a regular basis, makes it necessary — for lack of better terms — to pursue strategies to expedite my comprehension of a work of literature.

While several of my fellow English-major friends scoff at my CliffsNotes and SparkNotes utilization, I would like to out this practice as just another of those things we all do and none of us talk about.

Some stellar individuals may be able to read Northanger Abbey, Oliver Twist, Heart of Darkness, Vanity Fair, Jane Eyre, Tennant of Wildfell Hall and a bunch of poetry while folding clothes and designing the layout for the opinion section some 55 hours a week — but I am a student of more nebulous qualities.

I recently wrote an early draft of an essay based mostly on CliffsNotes for a novella that turned out to be actually shorter than its yellow-and-black pamphlet of bliss. I won’t even bother sharing the state I was in upon discovering that it was literally faster to read the short story (which was a brief burst of prose at the beginning of a thick chronology of criticism and analytical writings concerning the prelude-like novella) than it was to attempt a construction of understanding around the CliffsNotes. I ended up reading the whole thing anyway once I discovered that the academic backbone of my essay had scoliosis of the literary variety.

This experience, though, was a fluke. After all, CliffsNotes are meant for long books. Don Quixote and some of those dull, horrifically dry early novels are best enjoyed in condensed form. However, most novels are wonderful because of how the content is unfolded — and while a CliffNotes’ cold and impersonal relating of some incidents is necessarily funny, with blunt summaries reading, “Miss Havisham burst into flames and Pip put her out. She died,” I only read CliffsNotes under extreme circumstances.

Use these study tools to supplement your understanding of a book — not as a complete substitute. To be fair, I don’t even read the whole CliffsNotes because they give far too much analysis and prevent me from forming my own ideas and interpretations of the text — though it’s amazing just how much stuff there is beyond the oh-so-helpful chapter summaries and character-relationship maps.

Understand that while CliffsNotes are helpful in a pinch, they deaden the life of fantastic novels — Thackeray’s snarky gossip is lost in CliffsNotes, Jane Eyre’s deep lack of self-esteem hard to grasp, and Dickens’ caustic social criticism completely missing.

Don’t even try to find the CliffsNotes for poetry — if they existed, they could hardly be any less wasteful of your time than the CliffsNotes for a 75-page novella. Save the yellow-and-black pamphlets of bliss for books like Don Quixote. CliffsNotes are not cheating, but neither are they the proper way to enjoy literature. Use at your own risk.

Reach columnist Matthew Jackson at opinion@dailyuw.com.