How I Annotate My Books

If you do not write in your books this is not the blog post for you. However, if you’re a savage like me annotating is necessary. Honestly, since becoming a book blogger it's the only way I can remember details from the books I've read. My annotations help to jog my memory and provide comedic relief. Yes, I crack myself up. So here is my annotation method for all formats.

🕮Print books (physical, specifically owned) 

✎Tools: highlighter, tabs, stickers, stamps, transparent sticky notes, and digital book journal 

I think printed books are probably the easiest to talk about. There are whole reels dedicated to picking out tabs for books. I on the other have a two-tab method. One tag calls my attention to the passage, and the second tab means come back to, looking up, or journaling. I find that more than two-tab colors for me get too confusing.

I highlight passages that stick out to me but use a tab if the passage is very long. So, most times it's a combo of highlighter and tab. Tabbing also helps to quickly find these pages. I should mention I am an old-school neon yellow highlighter girlie. If you see me using another color check on me because something went wrong. 

I also use transparent sticky notes, particularly when I read nonfiction. The transparent sticky notes are used for definitions, chapter summaries, or notes to me. Yes, I sometimes make chapter summaries especially if the information is dense or had so many gems that I felt the need to summarize. Again, this is to help me remember. 

Stamps and stickers are really a way to capture my feeling at the time of reading. I don't do this consistently but when I do it's again a way to help me remember what I enjoyed (or didn't enjoy) about the book.

Once I'm done, I transfer information from the book to my digital journal. I rely mostly on my sticky notes and tabs to sum it all out. 

**Books I borrow I do not highlight. I rely on the transparent sticky notes to later move them into a notebook. 

🖥Ebooks (digital, specifically Kindle)

✎Tools: highlight function, notes, and bookmarks 

Since most of my reading has moved to ebooks, I had to figure out a way to replicate my printed book annotation to my ebooks. Thankfully, with my Kindle, I can highlight and make notes. Now, I have to clarify I use multiple highlight colors in the Kindle- 

• yellow- important I want to remember
• pink - look up (I use the dictionary function too, but if the word is new to me I will highlight it for future reference)
• blue - content idea 
• orange - error in the book 

I sometimes used the bookmark function if there's a long passage or favorite passages for quick reference. Now, I take it a step further and make notes on my highlights which take the place of my transparent sticky notes and if the passage was really good I favorite it. Once I'm done reading a book, I download my highlights and save them to my drive. Since I have the downloaded notes, I forego making notes in my journal and reference the download. I have to tell you now that I do this pretty regularly, it makes it a lot easier to find quotes for content. 

🎧Audiobooks (digital, Audible and Libro.fm)

✎Tools: bookmarks and note feature, and digital book journal 

 Audiobook annotations are straightforward, anytime there's something that sticks out to me I bookmark the time, and if there's a note feature like Libro.fm I add a note. I then transfer notes to my journal.

If you've gotten this far in the blog post I'm sure you're thinking this is too much. But as I've mentioned since I started book blogging, I have to find ways to help me remember and stay organized. These methods help me write reviews and inspire content, so yes, while it might seem like a lot, it works for me.

How do you annotate your books?

Happy Reading!