Issue 80: The no-bullshit guide to annotating your books
Or, at least, a good excuse to use up your collection of nice office supplies
If you are the kind of person who has a hard time finding time to read as much as you would like, you might be wondering why on Earth you would ever even want to think about ANNOTATING your books. Doesn’t that take a lot of time that you already don’t have?! It does take extra time but, hear me out. It’s totally worth it.
But first let me back up. I was never taught how to do this in school. I took one English class in college and - if you have been reading this newsletter for a little while, you probably can already tell - I have no idea how (or care to) really write a proper book review. BUT. I love to read and the older I get, the more I want to go DEEP in all areas of my life - my relationships, my conversations with random people on the internet, my inner monologue. So, this desire to annotate my books in order to get into them more deeply is somewhat new to me and it is not a nostalgic reliving of my college days. I just am tired of superficiality of all kinds. I have no time for small talk but will make time for a book, even on the busiest of days. It’s just how it is for me right now.
What I am about to share is a combination of what I continue to learn from my Close Reading Godmother - - and my own trial-and-error. If you decide to give this a go, please take this system as a jump-off point and work towards figuring out what makes sense for you.
First - I must say - I do not annotate every single book I read. The system I share below is not especially complicated or time consuming, but it does require additional time and a certain state of mind which… let’s be honest… are scarce resources. However, I now make an effort to annotate my favorite book of the month. It’s a way for me to linger with it longer and really use the book as a tool of learning more about myself and really honing in on my personal taste.
My favorite book of August was Playboy by Constance Debré, so I will use it as an example below.
I have two main guiding principles about this whole thing. 1) I am constantly reminding myself that I am doing this for MYSELF - because I want to, because I like this particular book, because I want to think deeply about it. I am notably NOT doing this to post aesthetic flat-lays on instagram (although I absolutely lose my mind over them, I love them so much) and, ultimately, nobody cares. My other rule is that 2) I keep my supplies simple and functional because I never want to find myself in a situation where I couldn’t do the thing because I didn’t have the things. This, by the way, is a good rule of thumb for anybody wanting to do any kind of creative work. There is no perfect book or perfect pen that will write the book, draw the image, plan the trip for you. YOU bring the magic. The supplies are just extras.
I use a lined journal to take notes, a pencil to do my initial underlining, a ballpoint pen for secondary underlining and color-coded sticky tabs once I get into it more deeply. I am linking these below but I almost don’t want to because my whole point is - honestly, it doesn’t matter. Use what you already have.
Colored pencils and ball-point pens are better than gel-ink and highlighters because they don’t bleed through the pages.
1| Underline as I read
I generally read with a pencil in hand. In fact, doing so allows me to spot a new favorite book early on. The more I find myself underlining, the more confident I feel that this book is going to be meaningful to me. But that’s that. Just read and underline.
2| Reading reflection
So if I have read the book, found half of it underlined and I still want to do MORE with it, I will proceed with my actual annotation process. At this point, I write about three pages of reading reflection on it - brain dump style - just to wrap my own head around the book. I do a super quick summary and then basically step back and ask myself:
How did this book affect me?
What will always stay with me?
Why do I seem to care so much?
Here are my pages from Playboy - I feel a little embarrassed to share these but I wanted to show you the full process.
3| Themes
After I have written my pages, I go back to the text. I grab a pen this time and go page by page, re-reading the underlined passages that struck me initially and noting any themes or questions the text raises for me. This allows me to build a set of themes that matter to me. I think this is one way in which I have made this process my own as I am not looking for all the things that make this book good, interesting or significant. I am NOT a literary scholar. What I am looking for are the themes that are interesting TO ME. That’s why I do the reflection notes first… so that I already sort of know what I think… and then, I go back to the text for a closer look.
I keep my themes to 5-7, because otherwise the whole project becomes unwieldy. Again, most good books are about many things and if I were to properly study a book, I would not place arbitrary limitations on how many themes to track. But because I am doing this for myself in order to crystalize my own thinking about this book, I am being practical.
Lastly, I assign color-tabs for each theme I choose to track and transfer those to the actual book.
4| Color coding
Color coding may seem a little extra - and it is. My husband, for example, dog-ears the pages he likes and finds that sufficient. But for me, color coding serves the dual purpose of 1) communicating visually to me which themes I seem to care most about and 2) serving as an easy reference point if/when I come back to the book at a later point (which is a real scenario since I am mostly annotating favorite books). In the very last minute, I also add a final color sticky for QUOTES - which is basically any passage that featured an especially clear artuculation of a theme or striking language.
I like to test my system by asking myself questions like… where did Constance talk about her “classist instincts” - a theme I loved and journaled about + a quote I remember marking because it made such an impression on me. If I’ve done this right, I should have no trouble finding the exact page because it’s color coded as green (bourgeois upbringing) and navy blue (quote).
And there it is above! Outlined initially by pencil, written on in pen, color-coded by theme and extra-flagged for interesting language. So satisfying!
5| Tying it all together
I think it’s important to take a final step after going through all this work and ask yourself - so what? Writing on Substack about the books is that final step for me because it forces me to make that final call —> what does all of this amount to for me as a reader?! But you don’t have to write in public to do that. You could either journal a bit more at this point or, honestly, just pausing to reflect would be great. It’s crazy how often we just close a book and go NEXT.
No. We no longer do that. We pause and think, ok?
Now that I have shared what I do and before I ask you about your own annotation system, I want to mention that I would like to figure out a way to collect my favorite quotes in a meaningful way so that I can return to them but I don’t have a system for that yet. I am leaning towards typing things up in my notes app but can’t decide if I want one massive note of all quotes or a separate note per book. I think I want a digital system so that I can easily search my quotes…but this recent post by Jillian Hess has me thinking that maybe I need to go old-school on this one. Ah. Decisions.
And on to some question for you:
What is your personal approach to annotating?
Do you collect your favorite quotes from the books you read? How?
Does my system seem simple enough to you or does it stress you out? I really, really hope this is not the case.
A reminder: In October, I will be facilitating The Joan Didion Group Project. If you are curious, please read more about the project HERE and/or sign up HERE.
I don’t want/like to read proper book reviews. I want to hear about a book like I would from a friend whilst also going deeper and you’re so wonderful at that!
All of those tabs are sexy. 😍 I usually just dog ear pages but you’ve got me wanting to try tab life. I also love the idea of doing it with your favorite book of the month. What a nice little treat. I found the whole process fascinating, thank you for giving us a peek inside your reading world.
I keep all of my favorite quotes in a very beautiful, very heavy hardback notebook where the paper is like card stock. It’s my favorite commonplace notebook I’ve ever had and sturdy as hell.
For collecting quotes: have you heard of commonplace notes? You might like that method because you like tracking by themes. I always think I want to start a notebook like this but I am too chaotic and don’t maintain. Maybe when I retire!
I just started using a five-year journal to collect one quote per day, no pressure and okay to skip a day. So far I like it but ask me if I am still doing it in five years!