I’ve seen a lot of videos about annotating books and I’ve been thinking about starting it.
When I’m reading I always see a lot of quotes that stick with me I want to tag.
My only concern is if you ever choose to reread the book, isn’t it a lot of hassle to remove those tabs every time you have a quote marked? Also I’m worried about if I’m taking the time to tab as I read I’m not fully immersing myself in the novel if I have to pause and mark something every so often.
Can anyone share their opinion on annotating? Pros and Cons welcome!
by notyouraverage_Amber
3 Comments
I personally want to just be in the moment with my book. Every now and then, I may see a quote that strikes me, and I type it into the notes in my phone. I don’t want to turn reading into a homework assignment with all that note-taking.
I’ve always at least somewhat annotated certain books… I don’t do the cute stuff I see online, as nice as it looks, like drawing in the margins or writing, like, a whole journal entry. Basically, I underline or highlight quotes that resonate with me, and I might write a note that’s a few words–if there’s a translation, or a historical reference I looked up, or things like that.
I’ve just started using tabs, and I don’t really have much of a system down for that yet. I haven’t decided if I like the tabs or not… Like, sure, it looks cool when I finish a book and look at the tabs, but I’m not sure it really adds much to the experience?
Basically, I color code my tabs. I’ll choose a few themes as I read (sometimes, I don’t tab until I’m part of the way through a book because I won’t necessarily know the themes yet). For example, I tabbed The Secret History, and my color tabs were “beautiful prose/imagery,” “characterization,” “persona,” (one of the things I find most interesting in the book–how characters go about crafting these personas, but they aren’t real), “psychology/philosophy” and… something else that I’m forgetting.
So, the tabs do help me find certain passages more easily, but it also took so much longer to tab the book than it would’ve if I were just reading, even with underlining. And I’m just not sure how much it adds to the experience. idk, I’m undecided.
I’m not big on it, but I have been known to underline a quote I really love or use a post it note to mark something. Recently I started keeping track of quotes I really like by writing them down (I use an app to track my reading and I put it in there). It’s a little awkward if the quotes don’t work out of context, but I have a little collection of quotes that stood out to me in my books 🙂