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☞ Taking notes in a book is a taboo subject for many bookworms out there, but for many others, it’s the opposite.

☞ Here are some of the methods I like to use when I find something of interest in a reading.

Content

• Flagging
• Annotating fiction and non-fiction books
• Using a notebook
• Digital notes

Flagging

I make sure I always carry sticky flags that I can quickly paste onto a page if I find something interesting or worth retaining.

I normally get the most standard ones that can be found in any store with the colours pink, orange, yellow, green, and blue. These suit me especially since they are mirrored by highlighter pens and highlighting colours on Kindle or the Book app for Apple.

I set each colour for a kind of information

• pink: a new word, a beautiful quote, a well made description
• orange: something important to me
• yellow: something important to the understanding of the book (like a recurring theme)
• green: something important from the book, a big takeaway, a mindblowing statement
• blue: a historical name, date or fact, a reference to another work

Annotating

☞ I will occasionally annotate a book. It will rarely be a novel, it’s normally textbooks or essays, so non-fiction books.

Non-fiction books

The reason is very simple for textbooks: they are reference books, therefore they are meant to store knowledge for you to access when you need it and a book can be lacking. For example:

• the book may have missing information, so you complete it
  • on your next consultation, you’ll have the full picture right away
• the book might explain in a confusing way, so you write in the margin
  • you won’t have to redo the effort of detangling explanations
• the book might be heavy on jargon, so you write the definitions or meanings of words
  • next time you won’t have to consult a dictionnary
• the book might have biases, so you indicate them
  • rereading with these in mind will allow you to get a fuller picture
• the book might explore a topic that leaves space for you to elaborate or comment
  • when you revisit this part, you’ll be able to see if you’ve maintained the same ideas or moved beyond them
• the book might talk about a subject you’ve heard of before, write the connections you made
  • this exercise enlarges the portrait made by the book;
  • it helps you connect dots and maintain those connections

Fiction books

Now what about fiction works. Many people find it repulsive to even consider it. But here are a few reasons why you might or might not want to annotate your fiction books:

• PROS:
  • if you’re in literature: you’ll probably want to annotate rhetorical figures, literary devices, narration techniques, and so on and so forth because they will contribute to your analysis and understanding of a work
  • while studying a book, you’ll maybe take notes about characters, places, and events of the book and write short summaries at the end of chapters, this will help you keep track, especially if you have to study a lot or are reading many books at a time
  • if you read for yourself: noting beautiful passages, emotions you felt during your reading experience, connections you made to your own life might enrich the pages and make this book a diary of your psyche
• CONS:
  • if you annotate for literature, you might end up with way too many notes in the text and in the margins, your books might look crowded.
  • if you leave traces of your emotions and impressions in a permanent way in a book, the next time you read it or someone else reads it, it will not be the same reading experience. The author’s intention might be contaminated

⟹ A solution to all this might be taking notes on post-its stuck to the book permanently, so that you have the option of taking them out, but the idea is to have a permanent record somewhere.

Using a notebook

☞ I was introduced to the idea of writing my book impressions in a notebook recently. It has been a game changer for a number of reasons. It’s not a revolutionary idea, but it makes a great difference, and if you want details on how to expertly use a notebook follow this link (coming soon).
⟹ Here are some advantages

• your notes are compiled in a single place
• you become more selective because of the time you have to take to transcribe
• this in turn makes you think about the value of your selections
• you have more space to write your impressions and thoughts
• you have more space which promotes reflecting about connections and expansion of the new ideas or old ideas you just encountered
• you can still write your summaries and explanation of the characters
• you can still enumerate the rhetorical figures and other literary effects you found but now you’ll have more space to explain your thoughts on them

⟹ An underrated effect of noting down by hand the items you actively chose, is the facilitated retention of the information

• since you made the mental exercise of asking and answering “why should you care about this piece of information?” you already interconnected many neurons in your brain and this bridging signifies to your brain the importance you put on this knowledge therefore improving the chances it is recalled
• the simple physical act of writing the words reinforces the pathways to the brain that are putting down the information, it’s crazy to think how connected the act of writing by hand is associated to our memory. Because it takes longer than just copy pasting or typing fast on a keyboard, there’s a slight rumination of the information that occurs as we write

Taking digital notes

☞ This one is just the latest iteration of the above annotation technique. You take notes but in a digital form. Here are some pros and cons I have found from using this method.

• PROS
  • you can write hyperlinks in your notes to connect your knowledge automatically
  • you can search your notes quickly
  • you can access your information on all your devices (provided the app allows it)
  • you can increase the speed at which you compile your information digitally versus analogically
  • you can use data visualisers to present your information in graphs and more
  • you can more easily work on your notes to convert them into: essays, publications, reviews, dissertations, data visualizers of all kinds
• CONS
  • it’s easier to hoard information
  • the copy and paste function makes it easier to skip the ‘writing out’ exercise, therefore to skip the exercise of reflecting
  • if your platform needs internet to work, it will be harder to access your notes anytime you need it, especially if they didn’t have time to syncronise on all your devices

☞ By far my favourite note taking app is Obsidian (here is my publication on why and how it works). But there’s also OneNote, Notion, Google Docs, Evernote, and more. If you want a review of the different plateforms and their advantages, follow this link (coming soon).

Recap/Récapitulation

☞ In this post I wrote about different ways you can note your impressions and discoveries from your readings such as: flagging, annotating a fiction and non-fiction book, taking notes in a notebook, or in digital form.

Questions & Comments 😄💬 Let’s Chat

☞ What’s your preferred method to take notes?

☞ Annotating a book, yay or nay?

☞ Is there ever a good reason to annotate a book?

☞ Tell me if you want a future post about expert note-booking 👈

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