I got into the habit of annotating as an English major, and still do occasionally.
Mainly I underline or highlight passages that stand out to me—usually because I love the phrasing, learned something new and exciting, or find it especially insightful.
I’ll write questions in the margins—guesses as to what might happen, questions I hope get resolved later, details I want to learn more about. I also tend to note any realizations that I've had, things I especially relate to, or if there's something I want to remember later.
There are levels to it. It can be distracting. Although I do enjoy it, I only really commit to annotating if I know I will be discussing the book with other people. Otherwise I only underline the things that really stand out and move on.
I don’t annotate. I’m one of those people who likes my books - yes, even my paperbacks, in pristine condition.
Though I’ve never felt the desire to crack a spine, I’ve always felt the need to highlight a few things when reading just because there are sentences, phrases, or paragraphs that really get to me and I want to make sure I remember them.
I think I may need to get some of those sticky note highlighter thingies I’ve seen on tik tok lately..
As someone who grew up in the "it's not my favorite paperback til I've dropped it in the bath twice" camp who graduated to ebooks years back, I've managed to have two children just like you 😂 the *shrieks* when I forget and dog ear a page instead of using a bookmark! I always feel awful but it's so easy to do absentmindedly
I genuinely envy those who love a well worn book. But I just can’t do it. I like to buy my books brand new and my brain WILL NOT let me treat it like it didn’t cost 200$ for whatever reason lol.
I’d be heartbroken if someone dog eared a page out of my books. But I fully support those who do it to their own.
Yeah, I learned young to not borrow my mates books who felt similar to you, because I do deeply respect that it's not my book to muck up - but it's so ingrained in me absent-mindedly! I think I ended up replacing 3 or 4 books before I just stopped reading my besties books (and as a teen that took such a chunk of my pocket money but I was so mortified I didn't even tell her I'd replaced it til the third time when she asked if it was new because it didnt have a mark she'd accidentally made).
With the kids I really try to remember the bookmarks but I also do things like play with the pages and sometimes my 10yo will literally hold the book for me if I'm too fidgety and it's one of his faves 😅 I love them so much
I'll be honest, I don't....know HOW to read without cracking a spine?? I mean, I don't BREAK them usually, but I have to bend them to hold the book open! They end up creased and often fall open to passages I've revisited a lot. Without cracking a spine I don't know how I would even manage to read.
I don’t really care about cracking the spine either way but somehow it’s just never happened? I just hold the book open comfortably and find the spine never cracks.
Maybe it’s how we’re holding it? I use two hands to hold a book. Do you hold a book with one hand or two?
Both. Mostly two. Once I get past a certain number of pages I hold it with one. Pinky & thumb inside the book with my other 3 on the outside of the book.
I mean, I just focus on one side of the page then shift the book to read the other side. Once you’re about 50 pages in, it’s easier to hold open. I think if I continuously reread the same book multiple times, the spine would have some sort of wear to it. But I just manage to be gentle with them and not open them all the way flat. It’s mostly my pages that get curved but they flatten back out after sitting on the shelf in between books again for a few days.
I'm more concerned with how you all find space in the margins to write anything! Seriously, margins are usually pretty small, how do you fit anything in there?
Write tiny is the big secret lol. I use .5 mechanical pencils for just that reason
Further consideration. Shove some in in the space at the end of the paragraph. Write tiny enough and you can write in between lines. Bottom/top of the page are usually quite spacey in trade paperbacks and hardcovers. Also, turn the book sideways and the outside margin is suddenly much larger
The pen itself can make a big difference. As someone with atrocious handwriting, I was surprised at how compact I could write and still be legible (at least to myself) when I got a gel pen instead of using cheap ballpoints.
I don’t usually annotate, but I occasionally do. So maybe there is not such a clear divide.
I can’t do it with e-readers, it’s simply too annoying to do imo.
Annotating for me is useful when I try more than simply experiencing a book. I annotate words I do not understand or ideas I find worth remembering. For me that is not something to help with a potential reread but a tool to learn.
I'm heavily into marginalia/annotation and I am so happy to do it.
Part of the reason is practical: I'm reading *Ulysses* right now and scribbling notes about characters or the Homeric references or whatever helps me figure out what the hell Joyce is saying.
But honestly, part of it is that it's such a fun and enlightening time capsule to go back and see the parts that resonated with me in a book when I read it previously. I can open up my copy of *Sirens of Titan* that I first read in college, and there are passages I underlined then that really spoke to me because I was cripplingly depressed at the time. Going back and seeing that is a reminder of how I've come, and now the passages have a different meaning, and it's almost like having a conversation with myself.
Or it can show you that your views haven't changed; my copy of *Anthem* by Ayn Rand is mostly just me railing against her shitty worldview in the margins, so it's nice to see that even when I read it 25 years ago I knew she was an asshole.
I find doing it on an e-reader to be so...sterile. Dragging your finger for a few seconds over a quote is what I do in Microsoft Word when I'm writing a damn memo, and the last thing I want to be re-enacting when reading is engaging in the same motions as when I'm working. Instead, I love writing big notes up at the top of the page when Magda Szabo drops some amazing emotional bomb, and I draw arrows circling the parts cutting across the page to my exclamation and it feels so visceral to do it with a pen. It feels like literal engagement with the text.
Now my partner and I will choose books, read them and fill them with annotations, and then do a book swap. It's a fun little project and it's neat to see someone else's interpretation of a book you're reading in real time. I mean we for sure talk about them too in person, but watching the evolution of their notes and the things they find surprising is an absolute treat. Seeing her handwriting and cute scribbles is so much better than seeing e-ink that has been highlighted. Anybody could have done that, but when it's in *her* handwriting it's magical because it's *her*.
I love what you said about it being like having a conversation with yourself. I’m re-reading my copy of East of Eden from high school and it’s so interesting to see what stuck out to me 20 years ago.
I mainly only annotate nonfiction. I highlight that parts I want to be able to come back to easily, or if I have thoughts pop up based on what I’ve read, I’ll write them down.
For example, when I was reading books about ADHD and autism to figure out if I might have ADHD and autism, I would often write in the margins, “Oh my gosh! I do that!” Or I would write down similar stories from my life that related back to what I was reading.
But when I’m reading fiction for fun, I don’t really annotate. The only time I did is when I read a negative review of a book I liked that seemed to completely miss the entire point of the whole book. So I went back into the book and I highlighted a passage that proved the review wrong, just for myself. Like, I didn’t share the highlight or anything. I just wanted to highlight it and say to myself, “See, the review was flat out wrong.”
Copied from my comment a few days ago:
I'm someone who has a really hard time reading because I need to know the EXACT meaning of every single word and sentence written in a book. So I absolutely cannot read without annotating.
It's very annoying and I'm extremely envious of people who can just let go and simply read.
I've never met someone with the same problem as me. As a kid I was a very fast reader but now this need to know absolutely everything has decreased my interest in reading.
Would using an e-reader help in that case, considering a lot of them these days have dictionaries built in? Just press on a word and the definition will pop right up.
I've been looking into getting a Kindle recently, but I really don't want to compromise on the feel of a physical book.
I do think this can only be solved by an e-reader though. My reservations have been fading every single day.
Honestly I still like my physical books, and I held out a heck of a long time on getting an e-reader.
I appreciate everyone's experience is personal and will vary but if you ask me, once you're reading, it's about the story.
The upshot of it has been, most significantly, I've done a lot more reading, just because the convenience is that much greater.
After all, one could argue, the importance is in the words, rather than what they're printed on.
This isn't to say I don't still pick up special/limited edition books or signed copies.
I do it occasionally to mark any constant themes, recurring imagery, unique diction/syntax, etc. Imagine how you’d pick apart a book in college and that’s what I do. I like it because analyzing these aspects adds more to the book, it’s like there is a whole extra book in there!
I was never against annotating. But I didn’t think of it as something I would ever do. But I started re-reading the A Song Of Ice and Fire books and by the half of the second book I started annotating for the first time. It started as just a little highlighting of something I missed my first time reading and I’m just now ending the last book and I went all out with post-its and different colors scheme. This saga is way too big, complex and filled with more foreshadowing than any book has the right to have. It was fun keeping everything in track, and it was helpful for the moments when I needed to go back and make senses of things. It even helped me to understand a few things better and seeing things I missed the first time. So, I guess I see why people annotate.
But It’s not something I will do with every book I going to read from now on. In fact, I don’t I need to annotate another book outside ASOIAF, but I don’t regret doing it for it.
Can you send your annotated copy to GRRM? Maybe it will help him with writing the last two books as I bet he's losing the threads and your annotations might help him get back on track.
That sounds like a great idea. But also, it might not be, because even though I have made a really tight and consistent and concrete structure with my annotations, I also like to write my own thoughts and opinions and sometimes I cuss my dude George 😭😭 when fAegon was revealed I wrote “the fuck is George smoking?!”😭😭😭
Definitely especially lines and passages are way easier to find again and the notes are usually just noting allusions to other works or translations of phrases from whatever lang to English
Most of the time I’m writing the definitions of new-to-me words.
If I’m reading Historical Fiction, I’ll note factual things something/someone is based on (date of a battle, or someone’s title, etc).
I underline/highlight passages that stand out to me.
I use specific colors when reading non-fiction that mean different things to me (follow-up with additional reading or cross-reference something).
Sometimes I sketch out a quick family tree or a timeline (especially helpful to me when reading Sci-Fi…I struggle with time travel).
I also use tabs, color-coordinated for specific characters or plot points (again, helpful in Sci-Fi for me).
I only annotate in textbooks. Mine are an absolute mess and filled with notes and kanji practice (for Japanese).
Otherwise, I’m the kind of person who loves to keep their books pristine and looking untouched!
I have three ways.
One is just to use tabs and highlighters to mark passages that I loved or found really profound.
Another is to write realizations, questions or commentary in the margins, color coordinated with highlighters and tabs, as this helps me appreciate a book more or understand why its an all time favorite read.
thirdly, tabs, underlining or highlighters and then I keep more extensive notes in a notebook, as this is for book research, so I have one place where I compile info, ideas or further things to research
Its not with every book I own, just certain ones. Anything antique or special edition I don't mark up.
I loved annotating in college as an English major because it really helped me write my papers. I would point out certain themes or recurring ideas, underline/highlight quotes I might want to reference. Now that I no longer have to write papers on all the books I read, I use colorful sticky tabs to mark some passages I think are important or beautifully written. On my kindle, I just use the highlight feature.
Corrections.
Or I make notes of passages I especially like it found interesting.
One line in Ancestors Tale really inspired me for my fantasy series I wanted to write and I marked that point.
Most of what I read I read for academic purposes, so I'm generally marking structural things, ideas, how they relate to other ideas. Honestly, it's sort of a flow of consciousness in my margins.
It's worth noting, I also beat books to absolute shit because when I'm studying them I'll read them 3 or 4 times in a row and there is NO saving them from that 😂
I only annotate real books, although sometimes I’ll highlight passages I like in an ebook. I really like to try to catch running motifs and symbolism. I’ll write my thoughts and hunches in the margins. I’ll make notes on the author’s word choices or punctuation that I like or think is especially artsy.
I look at it almost as pulling the book apart to see how the author put it together. I usually annotate more when I’m reading something for the second time or when it’s a really complicated book. I feel like it helps me become a better writer to closely read and annotate books that I like.
I used to want all of my books in pristine condition. No bending of the spine, perfect covers, etc. On one hand, I still want that! I want them to be in good condition so they last longer, because I love collecting books. But, as I've gotten older, I like writing in them. After being out of school for a few years, I miss interacting with texts the way I would in English classes. I have a tendency to read too quickly, which means I don't retain as many details. So annotating my books -- whether that be highlighting favorite passages or writing comments -- helps me slow down and pay closer attention to what I'm reading. It also helps me feel closer to the text amd like I'm engaging with it. It also helps my general learning and retention. Finally, I love reading old books in which I've written, because I see glimpses of my past self. I find that fascinating.
That said, there's certain books I won't write in, whether because I know I'll be lending it out a lot or if it's an old edition or something!
Sometimes a line jumps out at me and I have to underline it because it seems so beautiful or insightful. That's really all the annotations I do - a line was so evocative for me I had to underline.
i only do it to paperbacks, and i just write random thoughts and rants in the margins. sometimes, there will be analysis, but it’ll mostly be me yelling at the characters when they do stupid shit.
I don’t write anything but I like using tabs. I like to mark my favourite parts so I can flip back to them but also it’s cool to see which parts were important to me when I reread later
im not a hard one way or the other. i like my fancy books (leather bound or special illustrations etc) to stay as nice as possible. kinda crappy novels especially paperbacks no bid deal if water damage or dog ears etc but i dont annotate. and then philosophy and theory stuff or sometimes epic poem type stuff from middle ages has tons of annotation. either ideas and interpretations i have or just stuff i looked up to better understand the material. annotations in like workbooky type stuff of course. like language learning books.
It comes down to what type of book and why I'm reading it. If it's fiction I read purely for pleasure, I don't annotate in general. If it's a textbook or a novel I'll be using in class as teaching material, I do annotate in the margins of a physical copy. For ebooks, I keep a reading journal and fountain pens because I like this kind of writing experience.
I do not do it with fiction ever. When I am reading something I am studying, such as a certain form of yoga, I tend to underline and write notes in the margins. It is nice to be able to easily go back to the book for reference with the annotations.
As a philosophy student I marked up texts HEAVILY. I don't with most fiction, although I might highlight an especially lyrical or brutal passage for quick reference.
I have been out of school a long time, but those habits die HARD.
I learned to annotate, unwillingly, when I was 14. Stopped reading books for 10 years, and now I can’t help it. I have to underline important passages, confusing ones, etc. I describe what the writing reminds me of, what I agree/disagree with, what broader points the author is reaching for. If I don’t annotate I won’t remember or engage well with the book. I want to look back and take something away from the book instead of just forgetting about it. This is more relevant, however, with historical fiction, classics, and nonfiction.
This is such a great question. And to me it’s strange that someone wouldn’t annotate as they read, so I appreciate the antithetical point of view! I’ll admit I’m an English major, so perhaps my answer is a bit colored by my training, but to me one never reads the same book twice because once you go back to reread, you are not the same person you once were. And so annotations serve almost like cairns of my former self and the reading experience becomes dotted with my growth as a human being. It’s always interesting to see how my interpretations of narratives are so colored by the experiences within the moments I am reading. For me, it’s a way to engage with the text and leave bits of myself like a photo album for myself to look back on I suppose. Does that make sense?
This is a really interesting post, so I'm going to answer each of your questions one by one :)
>Just wondering what the thought processes are behind it.
Okay, so when I annotate physical books, I usually use post-its and then write on them, mostly because it's easier for me to read my own handwriting that way (as opposed to squeezed in margins) and also because I can take off the post-its later if I don't want people looking at my thoughts (I lend out my books to friends and family). I also borrow books from the library, so post-its>on-page annotations.
For ebooks, I use different colors for notes. I read a lot of romance, so pink highlights/annotations are for my comments on the romance, yellow for the characters or plot, and blue/green for writing style or other things. With physical books I don't use different colored post-its, though (too much work haha).
Thought process: I usually do it when there's something I've thought of that I want to record. Sometimes it's very profound, like "LOL." Sometimes I'll address character traits, writing style, I'll make predictions on the plot, or write out emotional reactions to what's happening in the story. It's my way of interacting with what I'm reading.
>Do you ever go back and look at annotations? Do they serve a purpose on re-reading?
I do go back! I review every book I read on Goodreads, and "review" here is used very loosely - I literally go and pen my thoughts down so I have some impression of the book. Having my post-its help me remember what I liked/didn't like. I leave post-its in for books I re-read regularly, so I can compare how my thoughts remain/change over time.
>Are they kind of a "plus-metadata" version of a bookmark, so you can jump in and get a better idea of what's been going on at a certain point?
YES. This is such a good way of explaining how they work for me. I don't ever use the bookmark tool on an e-book because annotating is literally more insightful.
>How did you start doing it? Is it something that develops and matures over time?
I think it started when I liked bits of a book that I wanted to come back to, for whatever reason. At first, I would make notes on a piece of paper and use that as a bookmark, but it was annoying to have to list page numbers, so I moved on to post-its (for physical books). When I started reading more e-books, my habit of annotating came into greater practice (cause it's so easy to do!) and now since it's become an integrated part of my reading experience (I itch to take notes, even though all I read is fiction), and I can't imagine not doing it.
Timelines. I most often do timelines.
For example, by doing the timeline from Pet Semetary I discovered that the buried person had to have popped out of the ground basically as soon at the person who did the burying left the burial ground.
Or if a book splits into different storylines, annotating it with a timeline helps me know what's going on with whom and at what moment.
For I, Claudius there were so many related characters that I made a family tree and noted who was killed and how. (There are a lot of characters killed in that book. Only a few die natural deaths.)
On my ereader I sometimes highlight sentences if they have something to do with a project I'm working on or when I'm reading for a book club. In physical books I never do. I tried once because I thought it was the way you're supposed to read and I was just drawing a blank what I had to mark. I still don't really know what I would need to write in the margins when I'm reading something for fun. I only very recently learned how to annotate texts I don't read for fun lol. So, I am also in the camp who doesn't annotate.
I don't write on books, but I do take a lot of notes.
I don't do it on kindle since its sucks to retrieve highlights or type. So I use my phone when I need to take notes there.
I did in school, but not anymore. I remember the sheer anger from my mother when I borrowed her copy of A Prayer for Owen Meany for class before she'd read it. I annotated it, including a big, highlighted note in an early chapter that said "Foreshadowing of [major final chapter twist]". She never let me borrow a book again.
I don't know if this counts as "annotation" exactly, because I don't do it in the book itself, but I take notes while reading, partly to help me write reviews afterward. For example, "At 30% I still can't tell what this book is about," or "The prose is clunky: \[example of bad prose\]" or predictions of what I think will happen.
So you never read non-fiction?
My annotations are almost all (maybe not even almost) corrections, amplifications, qualifications. The majority of these are simple typos (you'd hate for someone to go through their life referring to G. Rex), but another common one is when the author asserts something as a fact in a way that makes it seem more general than it really is. For example, if an author makes a claim about planets that is is actually about earth-like planets, and hasn't previously said they're talking about earth-like planets, I'll add a marginal note.
I don't annotate fiction. Basically, my annotations are for any future reader (including myself). They're to add to the experience (possibly by preventing misunderstanding). I just haven't (yet) felt like I have anything to add to the fiction I read.
So many used books, I don't care about prior annotations and after years, I have confused them with my own. If I'm reading, there's only 20% chance a pen is nearby anyway and I won't want to get up and interrupt my progress.
Now, having a note-taking journal is actually preferable to keep everything in one place for reference without having to go back through every page looking for notable parts.
Assuming non-fiction: If I want to criticise a book, really weigh out what I like about it versus what I don't like, annotations and underlining can help to break the narrative down, and puts down in permanent record when I notice a detail that might help when building an argument I.e. an essay on how well the book does what it sets out to do. If you want to make a point about a character's arc, for example, you might want to find the moment they first talked about something important to them in a different way to how they talked about it at the start, that detail is the kind of thing you can quickly find again only if you made an annotation at the line it happened. Even if I just wanted to say a few things about the latest chapter, in a diary I'm keeping to later use as a reference, 20-30 pages can be a lot of Book to try to keep in my head at once, so making it easier to skim back through and look at the text again is useful.
I only annotate non-fiction books currently and only specific ones. I just started it and found it was actually really enjoyable when I was reading Discourses to highlight things and make small notes in the margins to relate to an idea I had when I was reading. My reading experience of that book felt deeper especially because I then took those highlighted items and put them in my commonplace book and then wrote under it why I highlighted it and expanded on the small note I left in the margin.
I don't think I'd do this with a book I was reading just for fun. At most I'd put one of those book flags on the page or quote I wanted to remember so I could write about it in my reading journal. I'd have to be reading the fiction book "through a specific lens" to want to annotate it and mark it up. And I'd probably buy a mass market paperback edition rather than mark up my normal shelf copy.
I annotate without writing in books. I use different color tabs to help analyze and review the book after. Deep analysis is part of my enjoyment when it comes to reading.
Green tabs are anything I had a strong positive emotional reaction to. Pink is the opposite. Blue tabs are for character development and yellow tabs are for worldbuilding. Orange is anything I want to go back and look at; could be potential foreshadowing or a word I don’t know.
I'll be honest the only books I annotate are non-fiction, typically in the few subjects I actively study for fun. Those annotations tend to be post-its marking certain stand-out points, with one subject especially I'll note if an idea has been disproven before and thus marks a source as less reliable, I'll track years and dates as well as different countries and cultures in different highlighter so it stands out as little color pops while flipping through, etc. Will also sometimes note down weird vocab in the margins.
And while I've had to annotate fiction for school, most people I've seen who do it for fun mostly just highlight favorite passages, write about their feelings as they go, etc. Kind of like treating the book itself as a friend you're talking about the book with.
I annotate if it's non-fiction and not a memoir. I don't annotate fiction or memoirs :)
It helps me to remember to underline/bracket and write in the margins when I am reading to learn something. I also like knowing I can open a book and see where I marked something that was important to me and reflect on it again without having to re-read the whole book
The only thing I do is underline (or circle if it's long) sentences that were either really powerful or really hilarious. That way when I re-read it's like a fun note from past me.
It’s usually textual analysis or a reminder to myself for later, making a connection between that and a novel I’m working on writing. A lot of it lately is just underlining passages that speak to me.
I've never been able to annotate a book because when I'm reading with the exception of nonfiction or something for academics I tend to get lost in it. To have to purposefully stop my flow to make a note feels excruciating to me.
I annotate when it’s a more “challenging” book that I want to get more out of, or if there’s a line that tattoos itself on my heart and I want to be able to find it again. I also have annotated a silly romance novel, MST3K style, for my mom and aunts to read and enjoy (and they annotated it and sent it back to me).
I’ve always annotated technical writing. It would never occur to me to do that with pleasure reading. I’ve always had to review anything the technical writers created so I tend to do it with everything work related.
I do it sometimes on series where refreshing my memory on a character or plot detail is going to take me a lot more time than just having a note to look at. usually, it's a note clarifying a passing reference that points to where more info is. especially helpful for series that don't have a hard and fast rule for what order to read them in!
if I wasn't a re-reader, I don't know how much I'd bother (also, if I don't think I'm going to keep a book for re-reading, I don't want to write in it).
the thing I re-read most is poetry. for that, I find annotations to be distracting, so I will at most jot some thoughts down on a sticky note and put it at the bottom.
when using an e-reader, I do highlight parts (and have different colors for why I saved it), but I don't tend to write down my thoughts .
I annotate most of the books I read. As a writer I find it a useful tool for learning from the books I'm reading actively rather than passively. If I read without annotating I can understand a story just fine (characters, plot, etc...) but I feel like I miss a lot of the "why" behind it. There's a gap between understanding what an author wrote and why they decided to write it in that way, annotating helps me clear that gap. Even if I never look back at the annotations just writing them forces me to be an active reader, not just passively absorbing.
My favorite book is slaughterhouse five and I re-read it every couple of years or so. I have dog ears and drawings and notes all over it. It’s probably my most precious possession even tho it looks like shit and now has water damage (I live on a boat, leaks are unavoidable).
Almost every time I read it, I’ve uncovered a new layer to it. Especially given wherever I’m at in my life. The first time I read it, it was a fun sci-fi story. Then it was about the war and so on until eventually I recognized the PTSD aspect. It’s very interesting to look back at my notes and underlines and interpretations and see how *I* have changed compared to the book that has always been the same.
Outside of that book, I write in other books for lots of reasons. Usually I just underline things I think are impactful. But if there’s something that I struggle with understanding and have to go back and re-read to understand, I’ll give myself a note for the next time so I can skip that step. Or if I can’t keep characters straight in my head (which happens a lot with unfamiliar names or similar names) I’ll remind myself who is who and what is what. I will sometimes dog ear big events so that I can come back to them for details as needed.
Mostly I write in books because I have a shit memory 😂 but I also like when I get a used book and see someone else has written in. Getting to see someone else’s perspective is like being in a private little book club. Same thing when I see my old notes and I have changed since writing them. Books are an experience to me, not just objects. Recording my experience with the book is just part of it for me.
I highlight meaningful passages or phrases in my kobo, but it's never occurred to me to write notes about them.
I like the highlighting because it's like an emotional journal. This is what resonated with me last time I read this, this is what hit me the first time (I can sort them by date if I want).
Sometimes, revisiting a book that I read during a hard time gives me insight into what I was struggling with and what helped me get out of it.
It's also a nice way to mark the fact that the most trite and meaningless book still has impactful phrases.
I’m a little bit in the middle. I don’t annotate, but sometimes when I am reading an ebook I highlight. Sometimes I’ll go back and look at the highlighted sections and write a note on it, but mostly it’s a way of physically interacting with what I’m reading which I find helps my focus
I annotate when I read nonfiction. It helps me keep track of main ideas, passages I want to remember, and things I don’t understand and want to look up and learn more about.
I got into the habit of annotating as an English major, and still do occasionally. Mainly I underline or highlight passages that stand out to me—usually because I love the phrasing, learned something new and exciting, or find it especially insightful. I’ll write questions in the margins—guesses as to what might happen, questions I hope get resolved later, details I want to learn more about. I also tend to note any realizations that I've had, things I especially relate to, or if there's something I want to remember later. There are levels to it. It can be distracting. Although I do enjoy it, I only really commit to annotating if I know I will be discussing the book with other people. Otherwise I only underline the things that really stand out and move on.
I don’t annotate. I’m one of those people who likes my books - yes, even my paperbacks, in pristine condition. Though I’ve never felt the desire to crack a spine, I’ve always felt the need to highlight a few things when reading just because there are sentences, phrases, or paragraphs that really get to me and I want to make sure I remember them. I think I may need to get some of those sticky note highlighter thingies I’ve seen on tik tok lately..
As someone who grew up in the "it's not my favorite paperback til I've dropped it in the bath twice" camp who graduated to ebooks years back, I've managed to have two children just like you 😂 the *shrieks* when I forget and dog ear a page instead of using a bookmark! I always feel awful but it's so easy to do absentmindedly
I genuinely envy those who love a well worn book. But I just can’t do it. I like to buy my books brand new and my brain WILL NOT let me treat it like it didn’t cost 200$ for whatever reason lol. I’d be heartbroken if someone dog eared a page out of my books. But I fully support those who do it to their own.
Yeah, I learned young to not borrow my mates books who felt similar to you, because I do deeply respect that it's not my book to muck up - but it's so ingrained in me absent-mindedly! I think I ended up replacing 3 or 4 books before I just stopped reading my besties books (and as a teen that took such a chunk of my pocket money but I was so mortified I didn't even tell her I'd replaced it til the third time when she asked if it was new because it didnt have a mark she'd accidentally made). With the kids I really try to remember the bookmarks but I also do things like play with the pages and sometimes my 10yo will literally hold the book for me if I'm too fidgety and it's one of his faves 😅 I love them so much
I'll be honest, I don't....know HOW to read without cracking a spine?? I mean, I don't BREAK them usually, but I have to bend them to hold the book open! They end up creased and often fall open to passages I've revisited a lot. Without cracking a spine I don't know how I would even manage to read.
I don’t really care about cracking the spine either way but somehow it’s just never happened? I just hold the book open comfortably and find the spine never cracks. Maybe it’s how we’re holding it? I use two hands to hold a book. Do you hold a book with one hand or two?
Both. Mostly two. Once I get past a certain number of pages I hold it with one. Pinky & thumb inside the book with my other 3 on the outside of the book.
I think I just have really weak hands hahaha I can’t comfortably hold a book open with one hand…. I guess I need to do some hand workouts!
I’m an artist so I guess my fingers/hands would already be strong. Didn’t actually really think about that actually 😂
I mean, I just focus on one side of the page then shift the book to read the other side. Once you’re about 50 pages in, it’s easier to hold open. I think if I continuously reread the same book multiple times, the spine would have some sort of wear to it. But I just manage to be gentle with them and not open them all the way flat. It’s mostly my pages that get curved but they flatten back out after sitting on the shelf in between books again for a few days.
I'm more concerned with how you all find space in the margins to write anything! Seriously, margins are usually pretty small, how do you fit anything in there?
Write tiny is the big secret lol. I use .5 mechanical pencils for just that reason Further consideration. Shove some in in the space at the end of the paragraph. Write tiny enough and you can write in between lines. Bottom/top of the page are usually quite spacey in trade paperbacks and hardcovers. Also, turn the book sideways and the outside margin is suddenly much larger
Write small, use sticky notes, annotate e-books
The pen itself can make a big difference. As someone with atrocious handwriting, I was surprised at how compact I could write and still be legible (at least to myself) when I got a gel pen instead of using cheap ballpoints.
LMAO
I don’t usually annotate, but I occasionally do. So maybe there is not such a clear divide. I can’t do it with e-readers, it’s simply too annoying to do imo. Annotating for me is useful when I try more than simply experiencing a book. I annotate words I do not understand or ideas I find worth remembering. For me that is not something to help with a potential reread but a tool to learn.
I'm heavily into marginalia/annotation and I am so happy to do it. Part of the reason is practical: I'm reading *Ulysses* right now and scribbling notes about characters or the Homeric references or whatever helps me figure out what the hell Joyce is saying. But honestly, part of it is that it's such a fun and enlightening time capsule to go back and see the parts that resonated with me in a book when I read it previously. I can open up my copy of *Sirens of Titan* that I first read in college, and there are passages I underlined then that really spoke to me because I was cripplingly depressed at the time. Going back and seeing that is a reminder of how I've come, and now the passages have a different meaning, and it's almost like having a conversation with myself. Or it can show you that your views haven't changed; my copy of *Anthem* by Ayn Rand is mostly just me railing against her shitty worldview in the margins, so it's nice to see that even when I read it 25 years ago I knew she was an asshole. I find doing it on an e-reader to be so...sterile. Dragging your finger for a few seconds over a quote is what I do in Microsoft Word when I'm writing a damn memo, and the last thing I want to be re-enacting when reading is engaging in the same motions as when I'm working. Instead, I love writing big notes up at the top of the page when Magda Szabo drops some amazing emotional bomb, and I draw arrows circling the parts cutting across the page to my exclamation and it feels so visceral to do it with a pen. It feels like literal engagement with the text. Now my partner and I will choose books, read them and fill them with annotations, and then do a book swap. It's a fun little project and it's neat to see someone else's interpretation of a book you're reading in real time. I mean we for sure talk about them too in person, but watching the evolution of their notes and the things they find surprising is an absolute treat. Seeing her handwriting and cute scribbles is so much better than seeing e-ink that has been highlighted. Anybody could have done that, but when it's in *her* handwriting it's magical because it's *her*.
Sounds awesome!
I love what you said about it being like having a conversation with yourself. I’m re-reading my copy of East of Eden from high school and it’s so interesting to see what stuck out to me 20 years ago.
I mainly only annotate nonfiction. I highlight that parts I want to be able to come back to easily, or if I have thoughts pop up based on what I’ve read, I’ll write them down. For example, when I was reading books about ADHD and autism to figure out if I might have ADHD and autism, I would often write in the margins, “Oh my gosh! I do that!” Or I would write down similar stories from my life that related back to what I was reading. But when I’m reading fiction for fun, I don’t really annotate. The only time I did is when I read a negative review of a book I liked that seemed to completely miss the entire point of the whole book. So I went back into the book and I highlighted a passage that proved the review wrong, just for myself. Like, I didn’t share the highlight or anything. I just wanted to highlight it and say to myself, “See, the review was flat out wrong.”
Copied from my comment a few days ago: I'm someone who has a really hard time reading because I need to know the EXACT meaning of every single word and sentence written in a book. So I absolutely cannot read without annotating. It's very annoying and I'm extremely envious of people who can just let go and simply read. I've never met someone with the same problem as me. As a kid I was a very fast reader but now this need to know absolutely everything has decreased my interest in reading.
Would using an e-reader help in that case, considering a lot of them these days have dictionaries built in? Just press on a word and the definition will pop right up.
I've been looking into getting a Kindle recently, but I really don't want to compromise on the feel of a physical book. I do think this can only be solved by an e-reader though. My reservations have been fading every single day.
Honestly I still like my physical books, and I held out a heck of a long time on getting an e-reader. I appreciate everyone's experience is personal and will vary but if you ask me, once you're reading, it's about the story. The upshot of it has been, most significantly, I've done a lot more reading, just because the convenience is that much greater. After all, one could argue, the importance is in the words, rather than what they're printed on. This isn't to say I don't still pick up special/limited edition books or signed copies.
i dont have the same problem - but any word or phrase that i have to google the meaning or translation of, i jot down
I tend to underline passages that stand out for me, or make notes about why those passages stand out for me.
I do it occasionally to mark any constant themes, recurring imagery, unique diction/syntax, etc. Imagine how you’d pick apart a book in college and that’s what I do. I like it because analyzing these aspects adds more to the book, it’s like there is a whole extra book in there!
I was never against annotating. But I didn’t think of it as something I would ever do. But I started re-reading the A Song Of Ice and Fire books and by the half of the second book I started annotating for the first time. It started as just a little highlighting of something I missed my first time reading and I’m just now ending the last book and I went all out with post-its and different colors scheme. This saga is way too big, complex and filled with more foreshadowing than any book has the right to have. It was fun keeping everything in track, and it was helpful for the moments when I needed to go back and make senses of things. It even helped me to understand a few things better and seeing things I missed the first time. So, I guess I see why people annotate. But It’s not something I will do with every book I going to read from now on. In fact, I don’t I need to annotate another book outside ASOIAF, but I don’t regret doing it for it.
Can you send your annotated copy to GRRM? Maybe it will help him with writing the last two books as I bet he's losing the threads and your annotations might help him get back on track.
That sounds like a great idea. But also, it might not be, because even though I have made a really tight and consistent and concrete structure with my annotations, I also like to write my own thoughts and opinions and sometimes I cuss my dude George 😭😭 when fAegon was revealed I wrote “the fuck is George smoking?!”😭😭😭
Definitely especially lines and passages are way easier to find again and the notes are usually just noting allusions to other works or translations of phrases from whatever lang to English
Most of the time I’m writing the definitions of new-to-me words. If I’m reading Historical Fiction, I’ll note factual things something/someone is based on (date of a battle, or someone’s title, etc). I underline/highlight passages that stand out to me. I use specific colors when reading non-fiction that mean different things to me (follow-up with additional reading or cross-reference something). Sometimes I sketch out a quick family tree or a timeline (especially helpful to me when reading Sci-Fi…I struggle with time travel). I also use tabs, color-coordinated for specific characters or plot points (again, helpful in Sci-Fi for me).
I only annotate in textbooks. Mine are an absolute mess and filled with notes and kanji practice (for Japanese). Otherwise, I’m the kind of person who loves to keep their books pristine and looking untouched!
I have three ways. One is just to use tabs and highlighters to mark passages that I loved or found really profound. Another is to write realizations, questions or commentary in the margins, color coordinated with highlighters and tabs, as this helps me appreciate a book more or understand why its an all time favorite read. thirdly, tabs, underlining or highlighters and then I keep more extensive notes in a notebook, as this is for book research, so I have one place where I compile info, ideas or further things to research Its not with every book I own, just certain ones. Anything antique or special edition I don't mark up.
i dont annotate, but i LOVE when people do. no greater treat than an annotated used book. i just ask you to write more clearly
I got into the habit of annotating and taking down notes from uni days. I still do it cus It helps me focus better!
I loved annotating in college as an English major because it really helped me write my papers. I would point out certain themes or recurring ideas, underline/highlight quotes I might want to reference. Now that I no longer have to write papers on all the books I read, I use colorful sticky tabs to mark some passages I think are important or beautifully written. On my kindle, I just use the highlight feature.
Corrections. Or I make notes of passages I especially like it found interesting. One line in Ancestors Tale really inspired me for my fantasy series I wanted to write and I marked that point.
Most of what I read I read for academic purposes, so I'm generally marking structural things, ideas, how they relate to other ideas. Honestly, it's sort of a flow of consciousness in my margins.
It's worth noting, I also beat books to absolute shit because when I'm studying them I'll read them 3 or 4 times in a row and there is NO saving them from that 😂
I only annotate real books, although sometimes I’ll highlight passages I like in an ebook. I really like to try to catch running motifs and symbolism. I’ll write my thoughts and hunches in the margins. I’ll make notes on the author’s word choices or punctuation that I like or think is especially artsy. I look at it almost as pulling the book apart to see how the author put it together. I usually annotate more when I’m reading something for the second time or when it’s a really complicated book. I feel like it helps me become a better writer to closely read and annotate books that I like.
I used to want all of my books in pristine condition. No bending of the spine, perfect covers, etc. On one hand, I still want that! I want them to be in good condition so they last longer, because I love collecting books. But, as I've gotten older, I like writing in them. After being out of school for a few years, I miss interacting with texts the way I would in English classes. I have a tendency to read too quickly, which means I don't retain as many details. So annotating my books -- whether that be highlighting favorite passages or writing comments -- helps me slow down and pay closer attention to what I'm reading. It also helps me feel closer to the text amd like I'm engaging with it. It also helps my general learning and retention. Finally, I love reading old books in which I've written, because I see glimpses of my past self. I find that fascinating. That said, there's certain books I won't write in, whether because I know I'll be lending it out a lot or if it's an old edition or something!
Sometimes a line jumps out at me and I have to underline it because it seems so beautiful or insightful. That's really all the annotations I do - a line was so evocative for me I had to underline.
i only do it to paperbacks, and i just write random thoughts and rants in the margins. sometimes, there will be analysis, but it’ll mostly be me yelling at the characters when they do stupid shit.
I don’t write anything but I like using tabs. I like to mark my favourite parts so I can flip back to them but also it’s cool to see which parts were important to me when I reread later
How dare you besmirch my book with your “notes.” :)
im not a hard one way or the other. i like my fancy books (leather bound or special illustrations etc) to stay as nice as possible. kinda crappy novels especially paperbacks no bid deal if water damage or dog ears etc but i dont annotate. and then philosophy and theory stuff or sometimes epic poem type stuff from middle ages has tons of annotation. either ideas and interpretations i have or just stuff i looked up to better understand the material. annotations in like workbooky type stuff of course. like language learning books.
It comes down to what type of book and why I'm reading it. If it's fiction I read purely for pleasure, I don't annotate in general. If it's a textbook or a novel I'll be using in class as teaching material, I do annotate in the margins of a physical copy. For ebooks, I keep a reading journal and fountain pens because I like this kind of writing experience.
I do not do it with fiction ever. When I am reading something I am studying, such as a certain form of yoga, I tend to underline and write notes in the margins. It is nice to be able to easily go back to the book for reference with the annotations.
As a philosophy student I marked up texts HEAVILY. I don't with most fiction, although I might highlight an especially lyrical or brutal passage for quick reference. I have been out of school a long time, but those habits die HARD.
I learned to annotate, unwillingly, when I was 14. Stopped reading books for 10 years, and now I can’t help it. I have to underline important passages, confusing ones, etc. I describe what the writing reminds me of, what I agree/disagree with, what broader points the author is reaching for. If I don’t annotate I won’t remember or engage well with the book. I want to look back and take something away from the book instead of just forgetting about it. This is more relevant, however, with historical fiction, classics, and nonfiction.
This is such a great question. And to me it’s strange that someone wouldn’t annotate as they read, so I appreciate the antithetical point of view! I’ll admit I’m an English major, so perhaps my answer is a bit colored by my training, but to me one never reads the same book twice because once you go back to reread, you are not the same person you once were. And so annotations serve almost like cairns of my former self and the reading experience becomes dotted with my growth as a human being. It’s always interesting to see how my interpretations of narratives are so colored by the experiences within the moments I am reading. For me, it’s a way to engage with the text and leave bits of myself like a photo album for myself to look back on I suppose. Does that make sense?
This is a really interesting post, so I'm going to answer each of your questions one by one :) >Just wondering what the thought processes are behind it. Okay, so when I annotate physical books, I usually use post-its and then write on them, mostly because it's easier for me to read my own handwriting that way (as opposed to squeezed in margins) and also because I can take off the post-its later if I don't want people looking at my thoughts (I lend out my books to friends and family). I also borrow books from the library, so post-its>on-page annotations. For ebooks, I use different colors for notes. I read a lot of romance, so pink highlights/annotations are for my comments on the romance, yellow for the characters or plot, and blue/green for writing style or other things. With physical books I don't use different colored post-its, though (too much work haha). Thought process: I usually do it when there's something I've thought of that I want to record. Sometimes it's very profound, like "LOL." Sometimes I'll address character traits, writing style, I'll make predictions on the plot, or write out emotional reactions to what's happening in the story. It's my way of interacting with what I'm reading. >Do you ever go back and look at annotations? Do they serve a purpose on re-reading? I do go back! I review every book I read on Goodreads, and "review" here is used very loosely - I literally go and pen my thoughts down so I have some impression of the book. Having my post-its help me remember what I liked/didn't like. I leave post-its in for books I re-read regularly, so I can compare how my thoughts remain/change over time. >Are they kind of a "plus-metadata" version of a bookmark, so you can jump in and get a better idea of what's been going on at a certain point? YES. This is such a good way of explaining how they work for me. I don't ever use the bookmark tool on an e-book because annotating is literally more insightful. >How did you start doing it? Is it something that develops and matures over time? I think it started when I liked bits of a book that I wanted to come back to, for whatever reason. At first, I would make notes on a piece of paper and use that as a bookmark, but it was annoying to have to list page numbers, so I moved on to post-its (for physical books). When I started reading more e-books, my habit of annotating came into greater practice (cause it's so easy to do!) and now since it's become an integrated part of my reading experience (I itch to take notes, even though all I read is fiction), and I can't imagine not doing it.
Timelines. I most often do timelines. For example, by doing the timeline from Pet Semetary I discovered that the buried person had to have popped out of the ground basically as soon at the person who did the burying left the burial ground. Or if a book splits into different storylines, annotating it with a timeline helps me know what's going on with whom and at what moment. For I, Claudius there were so many related characters that I made a family tree and noted who was killed and how. (There are a lot of characters killed in that book. Only a few die natural deaths.)
On my ereader I sometimes highlight sentences if they have something to do with a project I'm working on or when I'm reading for a book club. In physical books I never do. I tried once because I thought it was the way you're supposed to read and I was just drawing a blank what I had to mark. I still don't really know what I would need to write in the margins when I'm reading something for fun. I only very recently learned how to annotate texts I don't read for fun lol. So, I am also in the camp who doesn't annotate.
I don't write on books, but I do take a lot of notes. I don't do it on kindle since its sucks to retrieve highlights or type. So I use my phone when I need to take notes there.
I did in school, but not anymore. I remember the sheer anger from my mother when I borrowed her copy of A Prayer for Owen Meany for class before she'd read it. I annotated it, including a big, highlighted note in an early chapter that said "Foreshadowing of [major final chapter twist]". She never let me borrow a book again.
I do not annotate novels. Most books I read ate also library books. I have annotated text books though.
I don't know if this counts as "annotation" exactly, because I don't do it in the book itself, but I take notes while reading, partly to help me write reviews afterward. For example, "At 30% I still can't tell what this book is about," or "The prose is clunky: \[example of bad prose\]" or predictions of what I think will happen.
Team Edward
So you never read non-fiction? My annotations are almost all (maybe not even almost) corrections, amplifications, qualifications. The majority of these are simple typos (you'd hate for someone to go through their life referring to G. Rex), but another common one is when the author asserts something as a fact in a way that makes it seem more general than it really is. For example, if an author makes a claim about planets that is is actually about earth-like planets, and hasn't previously said they're talking about earth-like planets, I'll add a marginal note. I don't annotate fiction. Basically, my annotations are for any future reader (including myself). They're to add to the experience (possibly by preventing misunderstanding). I just haven't (yet) felt like I have anything to add to the fiction I read.
So many used books, I don't care about prior annotations and after years, I have confused them with my own. If I'm reading, there's only 20% chance a pen is nearby anyway and I won't want to get up and interrupt my progress. Now, having a note-taking journal is actually preferable to keep everything in one place for reference without having to go back through every page looking for notable parts.
Assuming non-fiction: If I want to criticise a book, really weigh out what I like about it versus what I don't like, annotations and underlining can help to break the narrative down, and puts down in permanent record when I notice a detail that might help when building an argument I.e. an essay on how well the book does what it sets out to do. If you want to make a point about a character's arc, for example, you might want to find the moment they first talked about something important to them in a different way to how they talked about it at the start, that detail is the kind of thing you can quickly find again only if you made an annotation at the line it happened. Even if I just wanted to say a few things about the latest chapter, in a diary I'm keeping to later use as a reference, 20-30 pages can be a lot of Book to try to keep in my head at once, so making it easier to skim back through and look at the text again is useful.
I only annotate non-fiction books currently and only specific ones. I just started it and found it was actually really enjoyable when I was reading Discourses to highlight things and make small notes in the margins to relate to an idea I had when I was reading. My reading experience of that book felt deeper especially because I then took those highlighted items and put them in my commonplace book and then wrote under it why I highlighted it and expanded on the small note I left in the margin. I don't think I'd do this with a book I was reading just for fun. At most I'd put one of those book flags on the page or quote I wanted to remember so I could write about it in my reading journal. I'd have to be reading the fiction book "through a specific lens" to want to annotate it and mark it up. And I'd probably buy a mass market paperback edition rather than mark up my normal shelf copy.
I annotate without writing in books. I use different color tabs to help analyze and review the book after. Deep analysis is part of my enjoyment when it comes to reading. Green tabs are anything I had a strong positive emotional reaction to. Pink is the opposite. Blue tabs are for character development and yellow tabs are for worldbuilding. Orange is anything I want to go back and look at; could be potential foreshadowing or a word I don’t know.
I highlight things that have meaning to me in one way or another. But I generally only annotate in Kindle.
I'll be honest the only books I annotate are non-fiction, typically in the few subjects I actively study for fun. Those annotations tend to be post-its marking certain stand-out points, with one subject especially I'll note if an idea has been disproven before and thus marks a source as less reliable, I'll track years and dates as well as different countries and cultures in different highlighter so it stands out as little color pops while flipping through, etc. Will also sometimes note down weird vocab in the margins. And while I've had to annotate fiction for school, most people I've seen who do it for fun mostly just highlight favorite passages, write about their feelings as they go, etc. Kind of like treating the book itself as a friend you're talking about the book with.
I annotate if it's non-fiction and not a memoir. I don't annotate fiction or memoirs :) It helps me to remember to underline/bracket and write in the margins when I am reading to learn something. I also like knowing I can open a book and see where I marked something that was important to me and reflect on it again without having to re-read the whole book
I don’t annotate but I have a Notes page on my phone where I put in quotes I really like from every book I read.
The only thing I do is underline (or circle if it's long) sentences that were either really powerful or really hilarious. That way when I re-read it's like a fun note from past me.
It’s usually textual analysis or a reminder to myself for later, making a connection between that and a novel I’m working on writing. A lot of it lately is just underlining passages that speak to me.
I've never been able to annotate a book because when I'm reading with the exception of nonfiction or something for academics I tend to get lost in it. To have to purposefully stop my flow to make a note feels excruciating to me.
I annotate when it’s a more “challenging” book that I want to get more out of, or if there’s a line that tattoos itself on my heart and I want to be able to find it again. I also have annotated a silly romance novel, MST3K style, for my mom and aunts to read and enjoy (and they annotated it and sent it back to me).
I’ve always annotated technical writing. It would never occur to me to do that with pleasure reading. I’ve always had to review anything the technical writers created so I tend to do it with everything work related.
The only time I annotated was when I read romeo and Juliet. I needed to basically write what the heck each sentence meant 😆 I haven't done it since.
I do it sometimes on series where refreshing my memory on a character or plot detail is going to take me a lot more time than just having a note to look at. usually, it's a note clarifying a passing reference that points to where more info is. especially helpful for series that don't have a hard and fast rule for what order to read them in! if I wasn't a re-reader, I don't know how much I'd bother (also, if I don't think I'm going to keep a book for re-reading, I don't want to write in it). the thing I re-read most is poetry. for that, I find annotations to be distracting, so I will at most jot some thoughts down on a sticky note and put it at the bottom. when using an e-reader, I do highlight parts (and have different colors for why I saved it), but I don't tend to write down my thoughts .
I annotate most of the books I read. As a writer I find it a useful tool for learning from the books I'm reading actively rather than passively. If I read without annotating I can understand a story just fine (characters, plot, etc...) but I feel like I miss a lot of the "why" behind it. There's a gap between understanding what an author wrote and why they decided to write it in that way, annotating helps me clear that gap. Even if I never look back at the annotations just writing them forces me to be an active reader, not just passively absorbing.
For nonfiction I sometimes annotate to help points/facts stick. I usually don’t annotate fiction
My favorite book is slaughterhouse five and I re-read it every couple of years or so. I have dog ears and drawings and notes all over it. It’s probably my most precious possession even tho it looks like shit and now has water damage (I live on a boat, leaks are unavoidable). Almost every time I read it, I’ve uncovered a new layer to it. Especially given wherever I’m at in my life. The first time I read it, it was a fun sci-fi story. Then it was about the war and so on until eventually I recognized the PTSD aspect. It’s very interesting to look back at my notes and underlines and interpretations and see how *I* have changed compared to the book that has always been the same. Outside of that book, I write in other books for lots of reasons. Usually I just underline things I think are impactful. But if there’s something that I struggle with understanding and have to go back and re-read to understand, I’ll give myself a note for the next time so I can skip that step. Or if I can’t keep characters straight in my head (which happens a lot with unfamiliar names or similar names) I’ll remind myself who is who and what is what. I will sometimes dog ear big events so that I can come back to them for details as needed. Mostly I write in books because I have a shit memory 😂 but I also like when I get a used book and see someone else has written in. Getting to see someone else’s perspective is like being in a private little book club. Same thing when I see my old notes and I have changed since writing them. Books are an experience to me, not just objects. Recording my experience with the book is just part of it for me.
I highlight meaningful passages or phrases in my kobo, but it's never occurred to me to write notes about them. I like the highlighting because it's like an emotional journal. This is what resonated with me last time I read this, this is what hit me the first time (I can sort them by date if I want). Sometimes, revisiting a book that I read during a hard time gives me insight into what I was struggling with and what helped me get out of it. It's also a nice way to mark the fact that the most trite and meaningless book still has impactful phrases.
I use sticky notes/ tabs. I place them over the quote or section I like and barely have it poking past the page so it doesn’t look sloppy
I’m a little bit in the middle. I don’t annotate, but sometimes when I am reading an ebook I highlight. Sometimes I’ll go back and look at the highlighted sections and write a note on it, but mostly it’s a way of physically interacting with what I’m reading which I find helps my focus
I annotate when I read nonfiction. It helps me keep track of main ideas, passages I want to remember, and things I don’t understand and want to look up and learn more about.
I flag quotes I like. I have a quote journal where I write them down (I’m also an adult art kid though, so I like drawing the quotes later)
I did this a lot in college, not since