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.
I wish I had time to do this with more than one book a month, but at this point I need to take what I can get.
Re: the notebook - do you record on a schedule/consistently or whenever you feel inspired? I keep setting maximalist goals that I can't reach and I wonder if I am just expecting too much.
Are you able to go back to find quotes? I have several notebooks that put quotes in but have no organization of them so I can’t go back in any logical way.
However, I do love my notebooks for what you described as wanting ‘to be lit up as much as possible’. Sometimes, I might not even remember the actual plot of the book some quotes are from, but re-reading them is nonetheless inspiring and makes me happy (lit up) 😄
I don't really keep them highly organized. When I do go back to look for a quote, it gives me an opportunity to read the others I've recorded, which is nice. I'll spend some time just scanning through all the lines I love.
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!
I think index cards in a box so that I can then file by themes is my ideal scenario but (rightfully) requires quite a bit of work to maintain and I end up fizzling out...
I love the idea of the daily quote practice... I have seen those thick five year journals and they look so gorgeous!!! Hmmm....
I keep thinking I want to do index cards myself. But then I wonder if I would get frustrated by them someday (how to store, etc) that’s if chuck them (like I did the big stack of cards I wrote up of Italian vocabulary when I was on a Duolingo kick earlier in the year).
My notebooks (though disorganized) feel more manageable (from a storage angle).
It’s an imperfect system, but I often find the passages I want to remember are too long to enjoyably write out. My method is taking a photo, then using my phones ability to scan text from that photo and then copying the passage into a google doc
OK. Why are you such a genius? I love this because it feels realistic. Copying the quotes by hand would be ideal but I also mark up entire passages, so I end up not doing anything with them. This way I can copy into my notes app directly from my phone!
Do you have a document per book or do you run a single quotes document? Do you tag them in any way? I want to figure out a way to make my own quotes database searchable so that I can re-use them more easily.
at the moment, i have a running google doc - although i think that might get unwieldly eventually. i like copying into a doc rather than notes because the computer i use most often is a windows one and it's easier to access on desktop there. tagging would make a lot of sense but at the moment i just style the book names as title text which makes the document easy to skip through by book title. if i were organized and planning for the future, i'd tag them with searchable terms, but i'm just living in chaos at the moment.
the beauty of your current system is that once you have the digital quotes, you can do a number of upgrades - tagging, etc. but the hard part is figuring out an easy way to collect the quotes so that you can do so consistently. thank you so much for sharing! i will keep you posted on how it goes.
the one hilarious result of this "system" is that your phone photo library is slowly filled with photos of book pages. not necessarily a bad thing, but it is also funny because the photo search ALSO searches text in photos. when i search for photos of my dog (as i am want to do) it brings up every mention of "dog" in books 😂
you could solve this by organizing these photos into an album, but as with the tagging... i'm letting chaos reign
Nerdy researcher here - I have a knowledge management system in Notion. One database is for books. Each entry has my notes on a book by the contents structure. I either live-text as Laurel says or copy my notes highlighted from the kindle-app (4 different highlighting types).
I don't completely dissect a book. The level of 'analysis' and data capture depends on the book.
I've a top 10 list of books I read every year e.g. Emotional Agility by Susan David, each year I have a 'new take' on an insight, and it gets added to the review
Each year, new mind-frame view of the contents.
my system is a cross between 'How to read a book' by Charles van Doren & Adler Mortimer, and Tiago Forte's Build a second Brain
I don’t know anything about this scan/google doc functionality, but I am now quite addicted to taking screenshots of stuff… TBH, where my photos were mainly of cats and nature before, now it’s just screenshots of Substacks, LOL!
allowing myself to reread more often is something that i am working. i carry such a chip on my shoulder around not being well read that i don't want to "waste" reading time on books i've already read. but, of course, that's a totally wrong way to think about it. thank you for the reminder.
I’m the same Petya. I never re read books because I equally feel it is a waste of time. My brain says: I already like this one so why do I need to know if it like it again?!? I’ve got too many books I want to read for this!!
I use my notes app on my phone because I just can’t bring myself to mark up a book (who knows why) and often the book is borrowed from the library. So I’ll put down the page number and then my thoughts on it. If there’s a quote I want to remember, I’ll scan it into notes.
i am so embarrassed that i just learned i could do this from you AND i am so glad i asked because it's literally what i was struggling with. thank you, thank you!
Petya, this is a great piece. I was never taught this skill in school and have had to develop my own systems. Mine isn't identical to yours but similar and it works well. I think the important piece for people to realize is they need to make it their own system that works for them because this isn't a one size fits all process. Great work here.
Thank you so much, Matthew. I think I resisted doing this for a long time because I felt paralyzed by my lack of knowledge. Now, of course, I understand that there is no right way to do this and the real value is in trying to figure out what works for you!
Yes. I use a pen to underline and write in the margins. I use tabs as a visual reminder of where main things are although I don’t have a color coded system. I sometimes write thoughts and ideas in the front or back of a book as well. In addition to marking up the book, I keep a notebook nearby where I write down quotes, or key ideas I obtained from the text. As I have grown as a writer, I have found these annotations to be invaluable.
LOVE.THIS. Despite writing about books and writers, I don't have a specific 'system' for annotating my books. I'm not sure why, as I am very routine and organised in most other ways...but you have convinced me to get a notebook just to be my reading journal, and your tabs, pens & coloured pencil are even pushing me in the direction of wanting my very own brand-new-back-to-school-pencil-case :))
I am shocked that I am just starting to do this, too. Part of me likes not being precious about any of this - mark them up or don't, journal or don't, etc. Of course, it's all optional and it shouldn't feel like pressure at all. BUT. I have to say, it makes a difference.... and if that's the difference that you are seeking, it's worth spending time figuring out what works for you.
I found your annotation system incredibly helpful, especially the way it balances personal reflection with simplicity. Your advice to focus on what resonates with you rather than trying to “study” the book is a valuable reminder.
Petya - you read my mind! I have on my list: look up annotating techniques! I bought myself some post-its and want to start reading deeper into my favourite books. I really enjoyed and appreciated this post, thank you. I think I will start with mostly marking quotes and journalling about my experience reading- then see where the annotation process gets me as I learn more along the way.
As someone who does not write at all in books or make any notes and still somehow manages to write publicly about what I read, this is so fascinating!!! I have actually considered recently buying a notebook for the books because rn I just use my notes app. It’s because my brain moves so fast I get unbelievably frustrated at how I can’t write as fast as I type. When I finish a book I similarly sit for about 10/15 mins on my notes app and just absolutely word vomit on everything I thought. Then at the end of the month I come back to it and somehow in my brain I manage to create a review w no planning or notes. I’m not sure this is sustainable but it’s working… (for now maybe) I rely heavily on my emotional reactions to book.
(The running notebook I have is my journal which is reserved for unhinged processing and therapy. I do write all the time constantly but never make notes on books. I feel I needed to add this point haha)
I have kept quotes I like from books I've read for years. When I did this in a hardbound notebook, I wrote the title, author, and month and year in which I finished the book and then just wrote all of the quotes below. The obvious disadvantage was that I had to search through years' worth of notebooks to find a particular quote.
I now keep my "reading journal" in Evernote. I create a note for each month and then list each book with its quotes in chronological order by date finished. The 2 advantages here are that I can search my notes digitally and, because I read a lot of e-books, it's very easy to cut and paste quotes (highlighted while I was reading) into Evernote when I finish the book.
All of the group reads I am doing here on Substack prompted two additions to my process this year. First, I started buying paperbacks and annotating them; my annotation process is similar to yours, and it's based on YouTube videos by Plant Based Bride. Second, I have a separate notebook for my group reads, where I keep not only my selected quotes and personal thoughts, but also notes from the group posts or podcasts. I have to admit that I quickly fell far behind on this last notebook because I'm doing way too many group reads to stay current.
Lastly, I have also kept a commonplace book for many years, first in hardbound notebooks and then in Evernote. This is for quotes from sources other than the books I have read (magazine essays, posters, etc.) I am participating in @Jillian Hess's Commonplace Book Club this month and just purchased a beautiful five-year journal from Etsy to record my one quote per day. I think it will be interesting to look back in five years to compare what quotes spoke to me at different times.
I just started this for Jillian Hess's Commonplace Book Club, so I'm pulling old quotes for the moment and not spending too much time thinking about which one to use each day (beyond making sure it is short enough to fit in the available space in the journal). I would like to get to the point where I actually find a new quote each day (I think @Austin Kleon recommends this), but I'm not going to worry about it.
I also looooved that Noted post on Commonplace Books. I tried to keep an analog commonplace book but often found I didn’t make time for it or just never seemed to have it when I needed it. So I made a digital commonplace book on Notion! Like Laurel mentioned above, sometimes I’ll take a picture of the quote on my phone and then scan the text and copy it into my commonplace book using the Notion app. If you’re interested in seeing my digital commonplace book, I have a post on it here. https://writingbeyondthepage.substack.com/p/the-digital-commonplace-book-that
I love this so much, Petya. It's always so beautiful to see how people put together their intentional ways of interacting with books! I remember reading "They Say, I Say" in college (and later teaching it!) because the professors who wrote it champion this idea that reading scholarly research is a conversation. Later, I started to feel like all reading was a conversation, and one that I could take part in by annotating. That really feels like what you're building here: your way(s) of having ongoing conversations with the ideas you find in literature and stories. I love it!!!
Ok Haley is out here inspiring all of us because I just finished photographing all my annotation supplies too 😂I swear I'm not copying its just a really fun topic 🖤👻I use the same tabs I love matching them to the cover colors
Are you kidding me?! I absolutely don’t think you are copying me, this is only my favorite subject in the world and it’s what I want to read every day, all the time!!! I love it when different writers approach the same topic from their own perspective and share their own practices - we are in conversation with each other on a topic of mutual interest - it’s literally why I wanted to be on Substack. So, yeah, photograph away! I can’t wait to read it!!!
It's funny I ran across this article. I've been thinking of how I would collect all my notes, quotes etc. of what I read without carrying yet ANOTHER journal. Each month I've been using a single thin notebook of 30 pages - only writing on the right side each day. For my books, thoughts, article ideas, webinars, I've been using the left side... then I realized to go back, I'd have to figure out what month it was that I made those notes...
So for 2025 I'm still going to carry my single thin (light) notebook each month. Journal on the right side. Make the notes on the left, but have a nice bound journal which I'll transfer the important notes, thoughts and ideas into at the end of the month. This way I can determine if what I'd originally noted is still affecting me or is important enough to transfer - and the transfer process also further ingrains the thoughts and ideas. Also too. I can keep the notes for the same book together, rather than thinking of something a day or two later while I'm in the middle of writing about something else.
Yes!!! I love this system... I love notebooks so much but sometimes I look around my desk and think I've lost it. The system I use right now - a single paper planner for work and personal stuff, and then a notebook for work (job-job), a notebook for books (including Substack), a notebook for my each of the two non-profit boards I serve on; and, finally, my journal where I do my morning pages each morning. It's a lot but I work from home, so I am not really carrying them with me. They just sit in a stack and I pull whichever one I need at the moment.
As you can see, I spend a lot of time overthinking this. 😂
Petya… you are the one I’ve been looking for. I do the SAME thing! Not two different planners but I obsess over the notebooks and systems. Your desk sounds like mine. But yes, I carry mine so trying to find the best way to have what I want, without needing a luggage cart.
I love this system! (Especially the permission to only annotate a single book!)
My “system” is primarily in my journal, because if I love a book, I will unfailingly purchase and gift/loan the same title too many times to want to put anything for posterity in it. Also, I buy used when I can, with a particular preference for annotated copies—I value those diverse perspectives!
I also don’t “color code” so much as “color switch” on any given page. If I write a quote or thought in blue ink, I’ll write the next one in green or black with red for the page number (I obsessively collect multi-pens that also have a mechanical pencil). When I review, I may highlight themes, but again, I’m less interested in a color code than being able to easily spot distinctions.
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.
I wish I had time to do this with more than one book a month, but at this point I need to take what I can get.
Re: the notebook - do you record on a schedule/consistently or whenever you feel inspired? I keep setting maximalist goals that I can't reach and I wonder if I am just expecting too much.
Only when I’m inspired. When I read my notebook I want to be lit up as much as possible, so I only record quotes/passages that move me deeply.
Are you able to go back to find quotes? I have several notebooks that put quotes in but have no organization of them so I can’t go back in any logical way.
However, I do love my notebooks for what you described as wanting ‘to be lit up as much as possible’. Sometimes, I might not even remember the actual plot of the book some quotes are from, but re-reading them is nonetheless inspiring and makes me happy (lit up) 😄
I don't really keep them highly organized. When I do go back to look for a quote, it gives me an opportunity to read the others I've recorded, which is nice. I'll spend some time just scanning through all the lines I love.
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!
I think index cards in a box so that I can then file by themes is my ideal scenario but (rightfully) requires quite a bit of work to maintain and I end up fizzling out...
I love the idea of the daily quote practice... I have seen those thick five year journals and they look so gorgeous!!! Hmmm....
I keep thinking I want to do index cards myself. But then I wonder if I would get frustrated by them someday (how to store, etc) that’s if chuck them (like I did the big stack of cards I wrote up of Italian vocabulary when I was on a Duolingo kick earlier in the year).
My notebooks (though disorganized) feel more manageable (from a storage angle).
But I do love index cards!
It’s an imperfect system, but I often find the passages I want to remember are too long to enjoyably write out. My method is taking a photo, then using my phones ability to scan text from that photo and then copying the passage into a google doc
OK. Why are you such a genius? I love this because it feels realistic. Copying the quotes by hand would be ideal but I also mark up entire passages, so I end up not doing anything with them. This way I can copy into my notes app directly from my phone!
Do you have a document per book or do you run a single quotes document? Do you tag them in any way? I want to figure out a way to make my own quotes database searchable so that I can re-use them more easily.
Nerd alert! 😂😂😂🤷🏻♀️💁🏻♀️
at the moment, i have a running google doc - although i think that might get unwieldly eventually. i like copying into a doc rather than notes because the computer i use most often is a windows one and it's easier to access on desktop there. tagging would make a lot of sense but at the moment i just style the book names as title text which makes the document easy to skip through by book title. if i were organized and planning for the future, i'd tag them with searchable terms, but i'm just living in chaos at the moment.
the beauty of your current system is that once you have the digital quotes, you can do a number of upgrades - tagging, etc. but the hard part is figuring out an easy way to collect the quotes so that you can do so consistently. thank you so much for sharing! i will keep you posted on how it goes.
the one hilarious result of this "system" is that your phone photo library is slowly filled with photos of book pages. not necessarily a bad thing, but it is also funny because the photo search ALSO searches text in photos. when i search for photos of my dog (as i am want to do) it brings up every mention of "dog" in books 😂
you could solve this by organizing these photos into an album, but as with the tagging... i'm letting chaos reign
So funny.
Nerdy researcher here - I have a knowledge management system in Notion. One database is for books. Each entry has my notes on a book by the contents structure. I either live-text as Laurel says or copy my notes highlighted from the kindle-app (4 different highlighting types).
I don't completely dissect a book. The level of 'analysis' and data capture depends on the book.
I've a top 10 list of books I read every year e.g. Emotional Agility by Susan David, each year I have a 'new take' on an insight, and it gets added to the review
Each year, new mind-frame view of the contents.
my system is a cross between 'How to read a book' by Charles van Doren & Adler Mortimer, and Tiago Forte's Build a second Brain
I don’t know anything about this scan/google doc functionality, but I am now quite addicted to taking screenshots of stuff… TBH, where my photos were mainly of cats and nature before, now it’s just screenshots of Substacks, LOL!
I typically will go back to a book I adored and annotate it during a reread. I find that I fall in love with the book even deeper!
allowing myself to reread more often is something that i am working. i carry such a chip on my shoulder around not being well read that i don't want to "waste" reading time on books i've already read. but, of course, that's a totally wrong way to think about it. thank you for the reminder.
I’m the same Petya. I never re read books because I equally feel it is a waste of time. My brain says: I already like this one so why do I need to know if it like it again?!? I’ve got too many books I want to read for this!!
I use my notes app on my phone because I just can’t bring myself to mark up a book (who knows why) and often the book is borrowed from the library. So I’ll put down the page number and then my thoughts on it. If there’s a quote I want to remember, I’ll scan it into notes.
i am so embarrassed that i just learned i could do this from you AND i am so glad i asked because it's literally what i was struggling with. thank you, thank you!
Petya, this is a great piece. I was never taught this skill in school and have had to develop my own systems. Mine isn't identical to yours but similar and it works well. I think the important piece for people to realize is they need to make it their own system that works for them because this isn't a one size fits all process. Great work here.
Thank you so much, Matthew. I think I resisted doing this for a long time because I felt paralyzed by my lack of knowledge. Now, of course, I understand that there is no right way to do this and the real value is in trying to figure out what works for you!
Is collecting quotes part of your system?
Yes. I use a pen to underline and write in the margins. I use tabs as a visual reminder of where main things are although I don’t have a color coded system. I sometimes write thoughts and ideas in the front or back of a book as well. In addition to marking up the book, I keep a notebook nearby where I write down quotes, or key ideas I obtained from the text. As I have grown as a writer, I have found these annotations to be invaluable.
LOVE.THIS. Despite writing about books and writers, I don't have a specific 'system' for annotating my books. I'm not sure why, as I am very routine and organised in most other ways...but you have convinced me to get a notebook just to be my reading journal, and your tabs, pens & coloured pencil are even pushing me in the direction of wanting my very own brand-new-back-to-school-pencil-case :))
I am shocked that I am just starting to do this, too. Part of me likes not being precious about any of this - mark them up or don't, journal or don't, etc. Of course, it's all optional and it shouldn't feel like pressure at all. BUT. I have to say, it makes a difference.... and if that's the difference that you are seeking, it's worth spending time figuring out what works for you.
I found your annotation system incredibly helpful, especially the way it balances personal reflection with simplicity. Your advice to focus on what resonates with you rather than trying to “study” the book is a valuable reminder.
Petya - you read my mind! I have on my list: look up annotating techniques! I bought myself some post-its and want to start reading deeper into my favourite books. I really enjoyed and appreciated this post, thank you. I think I will start with mostly marking quotes and journalling about my experience reading- then see where the annotation process gets me as I learn more along the way.
As someone who does not write at all in books or make any notes and still somehow manages to write publicly about what I read, this is so fascinating!!! I have actually considered recently buying a notebook for the books because rn I just use my notes app. It’s because my brain moves so fast I get unbelievably frustrated at how I can’t write as fast as I type. When I finish a book I similarly sit for about 10/15 mins on my notes app and just absolutely word vomit on everything I thought. Then at the end of the month I come back to it and somehow in my brain I manage to create a review w no planning or notes. I’m not sure this is sustainable but it’s working… (for now maybe) I rely heavily on my emotional reactions to book.
(The running notebook I have is my journal which is reserved for unhinged processing and therapy. I do write all the time constantly but never make notes on books. I feel I needed to add this point haha)
I have kept quotes I like from books I've read for years. When I did this in a hardbound notebook, I wrote the title, author, and month and year in which I finished the book and then just wrote all of the quotes below. The obvious disadvantage was that I had to search through years' worth of notebooks to find a particular quote.
I now keep my "reading journal" in Evernote. I create a note for each month and then list each book with its quotes in chronological order by date finished. The 2 advantages here are that I can search my notes digitally and, because I read a lot of e-books, it's very easy to cut and paste quotes (highlighted while I was reading) into Evernote when I finish the book.
All of the group reads I am doing here on Substack prompted two additions to my process this year. First, I started buying paperbacks and annotating them; my annotation process is similar to yours, and it's based on YouTube videos by Plant Based Bride. Second, I have a separate notebook for my group reads, where I keep not only my selected quotes and personal thoughts, but also notes from the group posts or podcasts. I have to admit that I quickly fell far behind on this last notebook because I'm doing way too many group reads to stay current.
Lastly, I have also kept a commonplace book for many years, first in hardbound notebooks and then in Evernote. This is for quotes from sources other than the books I have read (magazine essays, posters, etc.) I am participating in @Jillian Hess's Commonplace Book Club this month and just purchased a beautiful five-year journal from Etsy to record my one quote per day. I think it will be interesting to look back in five years to compare what quotes spoke to me at different times.
I don’t think I’d necessarily find a quote a day. (I also think I’d probably fuss over what quote to use…)
I just started this for Jillian Hess's Commonplace Book Club, so I'm pulling old quotes for the moment and not spending too much time thinking about which one to use each day (beyond making sure it is short enough to fit in the available space in the journal). I would like to get to the point where I actually find a new quote each day (I think @Austin Kleon recommends this), but I'm not going to worry about it.
I also looooved that Noted post on Commonplace Books. I tried to keep an analog commonplace book but often found I didn’t make time for it or just never seemed to have it when I needed it. So I made a digital commonplace book on Notion! Like Laurel mentioned above, sometimes I’ll take a picture of the quote on my phone and then scan the text and copy it into my commonplace book using the Notion app. If you’re interested in seeing my digital commonplace book, I have a post on it here. https://writingbeyondthepage.substack.com/p/the-digital-commonplace-book-that
I love this so much, Petya. It's always so beautiful to see how people put together their intentional ways of interacting with books! I remember reading "They Say, I Say" in college (and later teaching it!) because the professors who wrote it champion this idea that reading scholarly research is a conversation. Later, I started to feel like all reading was a conversation, and one that I could take part in by annotating. That really feels like what you're building here: your way(s) of having ongoing conversations with the ideas you find in literature and stories. I love it!!!
Ok Haley is out here inspiring all of us because I just finished photographing all my annotation supplies too 😂I swear I'm not copying its just a really fun topic 🖤👻I use the same tabs I love matching them to the cover colors
Are you kidding me?! I absolutely don’t think you are copying me, this is only my favorite subject in the world and it’s what I want to read every day, all the time!!! I love it when different writers approach the same topic from their own perspective and share their own practices - we are in conversation with each other on a topic of mutual interest - it’s literally why I wanted to be on Substack. So, yeah, photograph away! I can’t wait to read it!!!
it is fun right?? glad you think so too :)
It's funny I ran across this article. I've been thinking of how I would collect all my notes, quotes etc. of what I read without carrying yet ANOTHER journal. Each month I've been using a single thin notebook of 30 pages - only writing on the right side each day. For my books, thoughts, article ideas, webinars, I've been using the left side... then I realized to go back, I'd have to figure out what month it was that I made those notes...
So for 2025 I'm still going to carry my single thin (light) notebook each month. Journal on the right side. Make the notes on the left, but have a nice bound journal which I'll transfer the important notes, thoughts and ideas into at the end of the month. This way I can determine if what I'd originally noted is still affecting me or is important enough to transfer - and the transfer process also further ingrains the thoughts and ideas. Also too. I can keep the notes for the same book together, rather than thinking of something a day or two later while I'm in the middle of writing about something else.
Yes!!! I love this system... I love notebooks so much but sometimes I look around my desk and think I've lost it. The system I use right now - a single paper planner for work and personal stuff, and then a notebook for work (job-job), a notebook for books (including Substack), a notebook for my each of the two non-profit boards I serve on; and, finally, my journal where I do my morning pages each morning. It's a lot but I work from home, so I am not really carrying them with me. They just sit in a stack and I pull whichever one I need at the moment.
As you can see, I spend a lot of time overthinking this. 😂
Petya… you are the one I’ve been looking for. I do the SAME thing! Not two different planners but I obsess over the notebooks and systems. Your desk sounds like mine. But yes, I carry mine so trying to find the best way to have what I want, without needing a luggage cart.
I love this system! (Especially the permission to only annotate a single book!)
My “system” is primarily in my journal, because if I love a book, I will unfailingly purchase and gift/loan the same title too many times to want to put anything for posterity in it. Also, I buy used when I can, with a particular preference for annotated copies—I value those diverse perspectives!
I also don’t “color code” so much as “color switch” on any given page. If I write a quote or thought in blue ink, I’ll write the next one in green or black with red for the page number (I obsessively collect multi-pens that also have a mechanical pencil). When I review, I may highlight themes, but again, I’m less interested in a color code than being able to easily spot distinctions.
I think that makes so much sense. Visual memory is REAL.