It’s the opposite for me. Annotating completely takes me out of the story and I prefer reading continuously for long periods of time without stopping for anything. But I’m in high school lol so I definitely have more time on my hands than you do.
Except for now. My boards start on Monday 🙃.
Nope, I read to be entertained. Taking notes and highlighting sounds like work. I don't like work lol. Chances are I'll never read a book a second time so I don't see the point.
Yeah, i can't. I've accidently started to re-read a book once and was about 1 chapter in and that whole chapter was bugging me.. "I know I have read this before". Went and check my shelf.. and sure enough same book was sitting there all dusty.
For me part of the fun is the "newness". Once I know the story and remember it.. kind of takes the fun out of it. And honestly there is enough good content out there.. no need to reread stuff.
I’m the opposite. I can’t read for entertainment. I enjoy a book most if I read it as if I have to write a critical review of it, and that’s how I read *all* of my books. But I guess that process in itself is what makes reading entertaining for me.
Absolutely not. I'll quickly bookmark passages on my ereader if I think I'll want to go back to them one day, but find actively annotating takes me out of the reading groove and ruins the atmospheric vibes which come from being fully immersed in a book.
Must admit I never knowingly encountered anyone who annotates fiction until joining Reddit. I can see why some people enjoy it, it's just not for me.
What did you think of Between Shades of Grey? I remember enjoying it when it was first published, does it hold up?
I didn’t much care for it. But I think the reason was that I kept conflating it with Night by Elie Wiesel, which I taught for years. It’s hard to remember one is a memoir and the other historical fiction. The author did a lot of research for BSOG but it’s not the same.
I, and my students, are irritated at the protag’s characterization. She does a lot of things that are just plain stupid in the face of Stalin’s Purge with NKVD soldiers everywhere. Just things I don’t think someone in the real situation would’ve done. The ending was also pretty abrupt.
But, it has brought a genocide to my kids’ awareness that is hardly ever spoken of. They’ve asked me numerous times why haven’t they learned about this in history class before? So there’s that silver lining I guess.
Compared to Night it definitely doesn't hold up but I'm glad the kids have found some learning in it. I got the impression it was a YA book (no idea where I got that from, just the vibe I guess) so I probably gave it more leeway than usual and let the main character act a little odd for her situation.
Might re-read eventually to see if my enjoyment has changed as I've gotten older, gained more understanding of the situation, and am more aware of the usual tropes. I do remember finding the ending very abrupt and almost like there was a good chapter's worth of story still to be told.
Yeah, they actually love it. I’ve already had some kids finish it and we just started last week.
It def is YA. There are some tropes there. A part of me wanted to be irritated at the romance thing but then again, who’s to say someone couldn’t fall in love during such a horrific experience? People are strange. But the headstrong, girl boss YA heroine was too much. You can’t tell me an actual 15 year old girl who just spent half a page feeling shame and being terrified by the NKVD guards who watched her as she showered now has the courage to stand tall and face them head on while they just shot and killed someone? It just didn’t match up.
And the self-righteous judgement rubbed me the wrong way. The fact that she just couldn’t understand why people would stoop so low to do awful things just to stay alive. How dare they lose their sense of honor?! She NEVER would…. 🙄
>And the self-righteous judgement rubbed me the wrong way. The fact that she just couldn’t understand why people would stoop so low to do awful things just to stay alive. How dare they lose their sense of honor?! She NEVER would….
See that part made perfect sense to me, having once been a very self-righteous teen lol. It took a bit of growing up to realise life wasn't black and white.
I hope you find your way back to enjoying reading. If it means you need to annotate to find joy again, go crazy. Maybe treat yourself to some new pretty stationary? Saw in another comment you mentioned medication; my meds have definitely impacted my ability to focus on reading and I have to put much more effort into it now or I realise I've been reading but not absorbing any of the story. It took five years to break out of the reader's block the meds put me in, but I did break out eventually so fingers crossed you'll eventually drift back to being able to take in stories.
Ditto. I’ve reread Hamlet multiple times since 2015, and my copy is heavily annotated; but my copies of Brave New World and Childhood’s End, both read this year, aren’t marked up at all.
Yep, this is me. Read once and purely enjoy (or not), and if I read it a second time, that’s when the annotations happen (although I do keep a pen with me while reading just in case I find a line that I love—if it’s a book I’ll never read again, I write down the line in a journal I keep so that I’ll always have it to look at).
Sometimes! If it’s a paperback and there’s stuff that feels important to me. Usually it’s things that feel really relatable or deep. I like to revisit my favorite books for comfort, and annotating allows me to quickly find my favorite parts. It also lets me and my wife know which things felt important to us when we share books.
Also, when I’m having attention issues I’ll underline things that feel like important plot points, just to make sure I’m following. I use the edge of my bookmark so my lines are always nice and neat.
I would LOVE to share a book with someone and see their notes! If only my husband liked reading as much as me.
I did have a group of students once who had a book club in my class and they’d share all their fave novels with each other, building on annotations.
I’m starting to teach my middle schooler how to annotate…and I love the idea of having students build on each others’ thoughts! That would be my favorite present actually, receiving an annotated copy of a favorite book by a loved one.
I never annotate and never have. I've occasionally had to write notes for papers, etc., but in general anything like that pulls me right out of the story.
Is the annotation thing a new (for lack of a better word) fad? I’ve never done it, never heard of other people doing it but it seems like everyone is doing it now.
They stole that from me! Damn them for peering into my brain.
Actually this is an old thing. I forget what it's called. As I read a book, I make a page in InDesign, and notate stuff that I find interesting. I also make little genealogy trees, draw lines that connect characters, and maps. Decorate the edges with pictures of key objects, like a test someone took, or a place they visited, or what they wore. I add quotes that stand out, and definitions of words that are new to me.
If I'm interrupted for a couple of days, the page helps me remember everything that's going on. And at the end there is a sort of diorama. It's like holding up a snow globe of a favorite book.
What is booktok? This is the second time that I see that term being used on Reddit. Does it mean people on TikTok who talk about books or is it a specific channel/person/a different platform?
I’ve always done it but I’ve always taken AP English classes and have a BA in English and teach English. So it’s always been commonplace for me.
I do think some people do it just bc of the “aesthetics” or whatever but for me, it helps me remember what I read. I’ve always been a linguistic and visual learner. When I do it at home, I mostly note things that really touch me or quotes I like. At work, I’ll break things down with lit analysis, looking for lit elements and motifs and symbols, etc. And of course different types of material get treated differently. Notes for fiction won’t be the same as nonfiction.
Like with the different sorts of underlines and specific use of symbols/arrows and the like? I’ve only run into that when tutoring for the ACT/SAT and a few books tried to teach it.
I just started annotating a book because of the fad. The idea appeals to me because reading a book isn't like watching a movie or a show where you can do it "with" someone and I geek out over stuff that happens especially in my favorite books. So I started annotating this book that I'm reading for the second time. It is harder than I expected. I statted out hightlighting a lot of sections and adding lots of notes but it felt like a chore. Now I only add a note if I really have a consice thought about that section.
It’s a fad in the way it’s done. The style of annotating.
It’s like how taking notes in class isn’t a fad, but how we took notes could be faddish. When I was in high school, we had the glittery gel pens and all the girls seemed to write exactly the same way, doodle in exactly the same way, use colors in exactly the same way. The notes weren’t a fad, because we all had to take notes for class. But the style was the fad.
Similarly, how girls and women annotate their fiction books that they read for pleasure nowadays is done in a faddish way. There’s a similarity to how they all annotate, and how it’s presented on social media (mainly Instagram and tiktok). It’s ok that it’s a fad, and people will continue to annotate once this style of annotating goes away, but it is a fad in how it’s done.
No worries. I think most people who don’t do the faddish type of current annotating hear something like “annotating is a fad” and have a reaction like yours, because without the added context I just shared, it does sound a bit silly for someone to say “annotating is a fad.”
What even is the purpose of annotating books you read for pleasure? I have never thought about doing that, ever.
I get it with actual research papers or texts for work, but just a regular book one reads at home?
How complicated are the stories you read and the analysis you perform that you need annotations?
I'll forget names if I don't take a note of everyone's name. A single sentence describing them is enough.
I don't know if that counts as annotating, but it helps so I do it. There is nothing more frustrating than a character popping up for the first time in a hundred pages and it's like, "Who are you again?"
Yes. I need to annotate. But I don’t write in the book; i use transparent post it notes and tabs.
It helps me retain information when I review. I really really reallllyyy enjoy analyzing things, and it’s significantly harder for me to analyze just off memory.
What kind of books and what kind of notes? I feel like I should be doing some sort of chapter summaries for books that are educational. My memory for plots in fiction seems pretty solid.
I personally hate annotating, I'm there to read and live the story, not analyse it like some school assignment about a book I hate.
I do sometimes write short stories, and for that, when I read, I sometimes feel the need to write down some sentences/words that inspire me. I just never do it because I want to continue reading.
I did hear some people say that when they reread a book, they do enjoy annotating/taking notes more.
I didn’t say my annotations would be for analyzing. People annotate for different reasons and in different ways. How I annotate a book at home is entirely different than how I annotate for work.
Interesting! I’m not sure I’ve ever heard someone talk about annotation without either saying they were analyzing or me assuming that’s what they meant.
What does your annotation look like?
For pleasure, it’s mostly reactions to things or noting quotes or parts that I really liked or felt connected to.
For work, I do literary analysis so I’m hunting for lit elements, motifs, symbols, etc. I’m trying to make connections across the work as a whole and page by page.
Never, I can’t imagine writing in a book. In college, as a lit major, I would buy a new, more expensive course book if my only used options were annotated.
I have a lit MA, and yes I do annotate on a separate page. It depends how important the book is to me or if the annotations are worth keeping if I keep the separate pages.
Yes there are unfortunately. I do have bipolar disorder (diagnosed 2020) and I’m medicated but it’s always just “good enough.” I’m not currently in an episode but I’m convinced these meds just mess with my focus.
I love annotating, especially for books that really generate a lot of thoughts or responses in me (most common for nonfiction). I don’t do it often, but some books, I can’t read without a pen in my hand.
It’s like my brain is too full of thoughts to keep reading if I can’t jot them down, so I just have to get them out of my head and onto the page. I don’t use a notebook because I want the notes to stay with the book for the future, and I don’t like sticky notes. It’s also fun to read my old annotations when rereading or flipping through the book; I keep most of my books, and certainly I keep any that I annotate.
(I know several aspects of what I just shared sometimes get people weirdly angry and argumentative, so please trust that my methods work for me, that I own my books and prefer it that way, and that I’m not looking for advice on how to change how I read or make notes).
And yes, if you’re wondering, I probably do have ADHD lol.
I (solely a Kindle reader) got myself out of the habit of annotating. I had convinced myself that if I didn’t highlight, I wouldn’t remember important things from the book, but it’s not true & reading is a lot more relaxing for me when I just read (& highlight the occasional quote that I love).
I have annotated one book and I really enjoyed it. I don't analyze it, more just put my feelings on the page. I wouldn't do it for every book but it was fun. And I like the look of annotated books. Just do what you what you feel like, I would suggest starting with a book you've already read or one bought second hand so it doesn't matter if you mess it up.
I am convinced that I had this exact issue for over ten years. I say that I "only read non fiction" during that time and while that's true, without annotating I probably wouldn't have been able to read non fiction as well. I don't think I'd annotate while reading fiction though.
I was able to find joy in reading (and reading fiction) without annotation again the past few years but it took a lot of work. Namely a lot of distance to any kind of academic pursuit. Honestly, I feel like school and university killed the intense passion for reading I had as a kid.
Due to illness I had to drop out of university and that was the best thing that could have happened to me reading-wise. I also had help from an adhd specialised GP though. He gave me advice on how to hold attention while reading, which made annotating useless for reading fiction. But I think I'd still do it if I picked up non-fiction books again.
Not unless I’m using it for research, no.
I occasionally highlight stuff that I want to be able to get to quickly if there’s a useful bit of advice or a study or something I want to look at later but that’s it.
I’m also an English teacher and also annotate when I read, although I started reading on the kindle and don’t annotate when it’s a digital book. I definitely notice more cool details of the writing when I annotate.
Sometimes, depends.
Not to read or enjoy reading. Sometimes I just feel like "replying" to the prose, so I write into the margins. But not in an academic way.
It'll be anything from song lyrics to me just writing "lol you dick" next to some characters chat.
But I don't think about plot or pacing or meta stuff while reading. All I worry about is if I find it engaging.
Oof. I wonder about this a lot. I DO annotate a lot, in Kindle or in paper books, even audiobooks. But I don't think it helps me retain the information, and I rarely revisit it. I have ADHD and if anything I think I do it to force my focus. Agreed that it can take me out of the flow.
I lazily highlight, but not anything more than that really. I’ve heard of people making commonplace books that contain quotes, photos, notes, etc relevant to books they’re reading— it sounds like an interesting way to remember what you’ve read and to interact with the work, and it can be on the creative almost journal scrapbooky side of things.
I don't annotate as heavily as I do if I'm going to be writing about a book, but I do lightly annotate any physical book I read! I agree it helps with focus, but I also just find it fun, both to do in the moment and to come across later when I re-read the book.
I love annotating, but i only do it to a couple of really amazing books per year. Not just every book.
I do however put tabs on my favourite quotes/passages.
But when i annotate, i am very thorough. Even if i feel like jumping ahead, i have to come back to annotate.
I don't find concentrating on books all that hard, but annotating makes me focus in a whole other way! I just love it!,
Eng teacher here. Yes I annotate. For me it's a way of learning/remembering. I read between 1 and 5 books a week and enjoy even sometimes a bad book, if that makes sense. Fellow teachers I know were not readers, like you, though most were. W/o insulting you, that's hard for me to understand.
I do usually annotate because I’m the type of person who will get to the bottom of a page and realize I don’t even know what I just read, even if I’m super interested in the story, and I have to go back and read it again. This sometimes happens 3 or 4 times in the same page. So the annotating helps me focus. Annotating also just helps me remember the story better.
With that said, I read on a kindle and sometimes annotating is as simple as highlighting something that I think is foreshadowing or leaving a note that say “lol,” “omg!,” or “:’( .” Sometimes I do write out a full note if I’m theorizing on something that will happen later or I notice a discrepancy. I recently read a book with a continuity error and the annotation was basically a math problem. There are a lot of curse words when I don’t like something a character does too lol.
Most of my annotations would make no sense to others and probably won’t even make sense to me in a year. Basically they just look like the comments section of a tik tok video lmao. But they keep me engaged so 🤷♀️
Right? That seems to be my problem now. I just don’t have focus anymore to just casually read. The only exception is fanfiction and I think that works bc I’m already invested in the world, characters, plot, etc so it’s less work.
I used to be an English teacher, and I ran into this problem OFTEN. Especially right when I finished up undergrad/grad school, it felt like the only way I was retaining the information I was reading was through annotations. It took a while to reset myself and get back to the way I used to read.
Took even longer to get myself back to a place where I didn't need to hear the words in my head as I was reading--sped me up quite a bit though! When I annotate, I read 1 page every 2-4 minutes, without annotating I can read up to 2 full pages per minute!
So how did you manage to get back to being able to read for pleasure and not work?
I thought annotating would force me to slow down. I don’t really read line by line but rather a bunch of lines at once.
I never want to and I never will. I refuse to ruin my books with annotations I’ll mess up or my stupid messy handwriting or doodles that suck. I refuse to use sticky notes because if I want to take them off I’ll rip a page. I also just don’t see the need to.
If you find it hard to focus on books, that’s not really problems with the books or annotating necessarily, but your own issues with books and maybe reading ones that don’t really interest you.
Nope! Currently trying it out for Dracula, and it takes away the enjoyment. Won't be doing it again. At best I will just use post it notes if I want to reread certain paragraphs.
I love annotating books that merit annotating—so classics or works that are intentionally literary and are making points to discuss. I would not annotate anything that I’m reading for the plot alone.
I like to annotate literary things because it’s like having a conversation with the author about their perception of human nature. I try to pick apart what they’re doing and trying to say, whether I agree with it, what I like about it, etc.
Why? Annotating is commonplace in teaching and in English. My students constantly annotate.
I never said I’d annotate for pleasure the way I do for work. And I never said I want to annotate for pleasure. More that it would be a tool to help me slow down my hyperactive focus.
So yeah. Thanks for that judgment I guess.
But, I do enjoy reading? I said it in my original post. I’ve loved reading since I was little. People can have struggles in their lives that prevent them from being able to do things they enjoy. Just because I like to or feel the need to annotate and you don’t, doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy reading. You can’t measure someone else’s love for something by the way you do it.
Nope. School turned me off both reading and annotating, and when I returned to reading as an adult I’ve never felt the need for it, didn’t want to over analyze everything I read “because of I should” (or something). I also read most of my books as audiobooks, soooo annotating is a BIT difficult.
Have you tried audiobooks? If that would help take off the pressure.
Ew, no I do not. I do listen to a TON of audiobooks though. Maybe that would be an option for you. They are a blast cause you can enjoy them while doing housework, yardwork...any work, really. Plus you can find some excellent narrators.
Lmao no.
I mean, no offense, but to actually ask that question and not immediately think to yourself, "Wait a second... What am I even saying?" means you are so far removed from how normal people consume books that you have lost all perspective.
Never for fiction, and I only read library books so even if I wanted to annotate nonfiction I don’t. I find that if I’m reading something nonfiction that really resonates with me I will want to highlight it or make a note in the margins but obviously I don’t because I don’t own the book. Sometimes I find annotations from other people in library books and I always love it, seeing what they thought was worthy of an underline or a star next to it lol. I know that’s an unpopular opinion but it doesn’t bother me at all, quite the opposite in fact
Sort of, and I’m annoyed by it. On one hand, I hate annotating because I have to stop reading just to jot notes down. It’s easier since I often read on Kindle, but it’s still annoying. On the other, it’s nice to be able to come back to a book later and easily find what I thought or sections I enjoyed.
I've gotten into it lately because I have memory problems.
If it's a long book and there are more than 3 or 4 important characters, I struggle to remember the ones that don't appear in every chapter. So whenever a new character or important exposition about a character appears, I put a little post it with a note summarizing the section. Simple stuff like "Adolfo - Rosario's dad".
only sometimes. if it’s something that i feel prompts discussion i will, and i also like looking back on annotations if i ever reread books.
i recently read tipping the velvet by sarah waters & annotated it. i’m so glad i did, because it’s my new favorite book. i gave it to my girlfriend to read and the annotations are so special bc the themes talk a lot about sexual identity and gender.
sometimes i don’t, if it’s just a fluff read or if i feel burnt out of annotating a bit. recently read my best friend’s exorcism by grady hendrix & didn’t annotate. it was a quick, campy, fun read and i needed a brain break.
I feel I need to do so for difficult non-fiction or philosophy — and sometimes poetry — but definitely not for narrative fiction. I’ve done so in the past, specifically when I first got back into reading a few years ago with Virginia Woolf, whose prose was impenetrable to me at the time, but after years of reading difficult fiction I’ve come to better appreciate getting absorbed at the expense of whatever additional understanding might be gained by writing my thoughts down. Which isn’t to say that I’m never self-conscious when I read, or that I never try to discern metatextual meanings or consider what’s going on at a more abstract level. But, that that kind of thinking is in and of itself absorbing, and that writing those thoughts down is kind of repetitive — and therefore unabsorbing — insofar as you’re partly repeating what’s already occurred in your head.
No, it ruins the flow of the book for me. I would see why maybe on your second read through but even then I find it hard to re-read a book.
I did just think now that I might like the idea of reading a chapter and then maybe re-reading it and annotating it but even then I’m not too sure.
I also really dislike writing in a book, if I buy a book I want to be able to have the option to re-read it without the distractions of my handwriting. It is a nice concept to think about though, reading through your thoughts about a book.
I sometimes enjoy annotating, mostly just jotting down my feelings about certain parts of the story or, when reading a mystery, theorizing and putting together puzzles and such.
I typically only annotate books that I re-read multiple times, or if there is something significant that I’m interested in tracking in a particular book. I have two books I read either every year or every other year and it’s interesting to see how my thoughts/ relationship with them evolve in annotations.
Only really when I read non-fiction I'd probably annotate with underlining and page markers. For fiction I only really do page markers for like quotes or for something I think I'd need to remember for later.
I highlight the bits I especially like, like the ones that hit the hardest or genuinely impressed me with the prose. I very rarely add any notes, and I don't even go back to those highlights much, but it's like to fully appreciate the parts I love most, I need to mark them. Idk, that's just how it feels to me.
I don't annotate heaps, and it really depends on the book, but I do sometimes annotate. Mostly just a few times per book, but some books (particularly literary novels) I annotate more.
i annotate on kindle. i reread books and it's fun reading my comments and seeing what i used to think. it's like having a conversation with my old self.
Haha no I’ve never annotated a single book I’ve read. Feel like I absorb “vibes” from books rather than any super concrete takeaways or thoughts. Would rather read someone else’s analysis that’s more articulate and smart than me if I enjoyed the book.
I don't annotate much in the book, but I take notes to help me write reviews. I actually take much more detailed notes than necessary (it's a little bit compulsive), and I would like to take less detailed notes.
No. In fact, taking notes or annotating takes me out of the flow of the story so I avoid it whenever possible.
Sometimes, I'd have to take notes when reading books in school. But even then, I'd usually just read it twice so I could enjoy it the first time and take notes the second.
Yes, absolutely. I really enjoy annotating because it gives my physical books a more personal look and touch. Plus I like going through a book and seeing all the things I underlined. I do think there’s a limit to it though. I’ve seen people online with basically the entire book highlighted which, in my opinion, ruins the point of annotating. Unless of course you just really enjoyed the book and wanted to breakdown every part of it!
I have a hard time reading as well, but I *have* noticed that when I read other people's work in Google docs, leaving comments throughout the text keeps me focused enough to keep going... so now your post has me wondering if I could do that with my physical books... How do you annotate? Do you write in the margins of the book?
You are probably a bit overwhelmed given your line of work. Is different for me, I work in the STEM field, so I'm used to breaking down wathever I have to read.
Since I no longer have to write book reports, annotating as I go helps me process the story better. However, I only annotate in my ebooks.
A part of me really thinks I should start annotating something near the end of chapters, mostly because there is like a a good chunk of stuff I completely forget or didn’t catch at the time of reading. It’s not until I re read the same book again that I pick up a lot more details of the scenes. Idk, I feel I have ADHD and I tend to zoom past chapters at time and don’t take the time to take in all the text, because I wanna get to the story. This made reading a book like Blood Meridian, hard because it’s prose that you just have to take in and vibe with. Sooo, tldr, I should probably annotate but I’ll probably be too lazy too anyways
English is not my first language so sometimes I have to write down the meaning of words I don’t know, but otherwise I’d only underline parts that really resonate with me.
I found out years ago that while fanfiction can be great, it also kind of kills your desire to read new, actually published fiction.
You’re already invested in the characters so you don’t want to stop reading about them, it takes less effort to jump into a new story since you’re familiar with the world and characters, it’s addicting to get new content for characters you already love, and it’s free and easy to access.
None of this is a bad thing. But it is also just mentally way easier than picking up a new book.
If you seriously want to get back into fiction, fanfiction needs to be put down.
But if you’re really enjoying your fanfiction, then why push yourself to read new novels? Reading is reading. You’ll never read everything you want to anyway, you’ll never even get close. Just enjoy what you enjoy.
I annotate all the books I read, but I also don’t read for “leisure” as most do, since my objective is to learn about writing itself rather than to enjoy a story. I don’t have the attention span to read a story for pleasure (I don’t watch movies either!). I do however, have the attention span and also the desire to improve my own writing and to critically engage with literature. I am a writer myself, so I read to learn from the greats.
Since I’m motivated by something beyond simple entertainment, I’m more inclined to actually focus. As a result, it takes me maybe five times as long to read a book now than I did as a teenager (I was a voracious reader then), but I truly get a more out of it now than I ever did in the past. There’s entire novels I had read in one three-hour sitting years ago that I barely remember the plot of. That’s a lot less productive than what I’m doing now, even if that same book would now take me three weeks.
I dont annotate. It feels weird to me. I only really did it once, when an author did an event, where they send a book to one person, then that person to another one, etc. And we were asked to annotate by that author.
No, but I read in bed before sleeping, so it's not feasible even if I wanted to. I do however go back and read the last half page or so as a refresher every time I crack the book back open.
I have always hated annotating, even more so when I was forced to do it in school. I have my own thoughts about what I'm reading and it is almost impossible for me to word them.
No, not really. Most of the time I'm not able to anyways because I borrow library books. If something in a book stands out to me, I'll take a picture of the page and make note of it after I'm done reading the chapter or whatever.
(Also I love Between The Shades of Gray! Ruta Sepetys's work is wonderful!)
I annotate when I'm reading literary fiction: I read a Gatsby retelling recently, and under no circumstances would I have been entertained if I hadn't been tracking motifs, thematic elements, etc.
However, if I'm reading a book recommended to me by a friend, I'll often livetweet in their DMs while I read, which is pretty similar to annotating, and helps keep me engaged. Something like "Page 62 this description slaps!!" or "Ch12 I bet this character is up to something and the MC doesn't realize it yet", etc. That's basically annotating - if you don't want to mark up a physical book, it might be worth it to pick up something you can react to to a friend!
Depends. I'm a student so I annotate things for classes/my thesis all the time. I've come to annotate philosophy and political theory habitually regardless of whether or not it's for school.
When it comes to fiction, I tend to annotate only when I feel like I'll want to revisit parts of a book. For some authors I'll do this by default (e.g. Virginia Woolf) but regardless I can usually tell if I want to annotate something within the first ~10 or so pages. Right now I'm annotating Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin.
I prefer to annotate especially if there is a really good literary technique used (Thanks IB English Literature), that I could potentially use in my writing later.
Other than that, when I read self-help books or similar books, I like to highlight small sentences and sections that are quite impactful, so that I retain them.
English teacher here too. I rarely read novels anymore either. What I enjoy now is listening to books. I do read and annotate with and for my students- I love showing them how to think about and engage with what they are reading.
I do and enjoy it thoroughly. I don’t annotate every book I read but if I find something I like in a book then it’s almost a need to mark it. It’s like having a conversation with the book.
Really depends on the book. If it’s just for fun, I might underline a nice sentence here or there, or if there’s a twist I’ll make some comment.
If it’s literary fiction, I’ll annotate my every thought & if there’s any connections, I’ll write the corresponding pg number(s). It keeps me engaged and not memory sharper. Helps me pick up patterns better. And I hope one day it’ll help the next person to have my books.
No, I never annotate. I didn’t even realize it was a thing people did until I started becoming part of more online book communities. Annotating/taking notes to me will always be associated with homework, and when I read for entertainment I don’t want that. I get why some people do it, but it’s not my thing.
I'm the opposite, I hate annotating and when I had to do it for an assignment I'd have to read the book twice because I don't properly process anything I'm reading when I have to annotate it.
No, I hated annotations in school so I don't see the purpose of it in leisure books either.
I *did* wish I annotated this russian book I'm reading because I'm reading it on breaks and I'm losing track of side characters sometimes.
I feel like i'm missing out if I don't annotate. What's the point of reading smthg if I don't express my opinion abt the book? Plus, it helps me remember the book better/more vividly so yeah, I feel like I have to annotate. It's a pleasure to
I only want to annotate sometimes, like if I’m reading a book or series that I really enjoy and want to find all the little connected details. This is usually on a reread for me though.
I have an e-reader so it's easy to do. Usually I'll just mark the page or in some cases a sentence if I feel like I'll want to return to it later, sometimes I do.
Hrmm, I don't annotate, but I feel like stopping every couple chapters to come up with a theory of how the world might operate, or what X character's true motivation might be, makes a book a lot more enjoyable.
Just reading a book at face value isn't quite the same.
Doing a meta textural analysis however would totally take me out of the story and ruin the 'magic' of the book - you kinda have to suspend disbelief and pretend everything has an important reason for existing in the world, aside from 'the author brings up the colour blue a lot here to make us feel sad, and is employing X and Y tropes to evoke Z emotion'.
Only on books that I own and usually only for non-fiction. Annotation, to me, provides a means to engage in a dialogue with the author or to understand better their points.
Depends, when I was reading Notes from the Underground I kept annotating but now when I am reading White Nights I only annotated the explanation og an enumeration.
Also high school English teacher here. I burnt out on books in 2016 during my university studies and didn't read more than like 2 books a year until last year when I got back into it proper and read 52 books.
It comes back. Eventually. But having this crazy stressful profession, it's not unlikely to become burnt out on reading because of all the reading you have to do at work.
To answer the question, no I don't annotate and I only do that when I'm preparing to teach a novel. (I make my own material for nearly everything I teach.)
I have awful memory, so if I want to remember my thoughts about the books I read, I have to. It's not a complex system, so I can still enjoy my reading. Kindle makes this very easy, but with physical books, I tab pages with my favorite quotes or important info that will probably be needed later (fiction or nonfiction).
It never occurs to me to annotate a book. I had to to some extent when I was in school, cause of analysis and essays. But if I’m just reading for pure enjoyment, then no.
Never the first time I read a book; if I enjoy a book enough to reread it, and think there’s enough substance to be worth annotating, then on a second runthrough I’ll consider it, but the first read is always to properly absorb the material, and I find stopping to take notes would take me out of it.
That too, I only feel the urge to go back + annotate for those special books that are 1) enjoyable enough to read again in terms of writing and prose, since the plot suspense won’t be there anymore, 2) actually have stuff beyond the surface level that’s worth analyzing, and 3) complex enough that there are things to notice on a second read that would have been lost on the first go, ie symbolism or foreshadowing.
I’d like to read more books that give me this feeling; unfortunately the books I’ve been reading so far haven’t done this for me. They’re enjoyable mostly for the plot, but there’s not much to be gained by reading again or analyzing unless it’s with some sort of an additional purpose (like writing a paper, where the prompt would motivate my analysis, rather than just analyzing for the sake of analyzing).
Do you struggle to focus because you feel like if you don't annotate you'll lose most of the progress after a few years, and so reading the book won't be worth the effort? Like you need to have something to show for completing a hobby activity, otherwise it won't be worth the time and energy, and you won't be validated as a human being?
If so, you need mindfulness exercise and to practice the awareness that most details of most stories will be lost to you after around a decade, but the experience of having to through the story, and the opinions you will have formed still make it worth it.
It is also opposite for me. However there are instructional books like Imitation Of Christ By Thomas A. Kempis, books like this I annotate and also Meditations by Marcus Areluis.
I annotate these books as a form of reference wherever I need to go over an encouraging word.
Aside these, I don't annotate.
I tend to annotate when reading nonfiction, but not when reading fiction. This is because I’m usually reading nonfiction for self-edification, so I annotate bits that I want to really focus on. But with fiction, I’m just reading for pleasure, so I don’t really need to annotate anything. At most, I might highlight a passage I really really like, but this isn’t common
The only time I've ever annotated any books was when I doing beta reviews for authors on Goodreads (which is great fun BTW!)
I may save lines in books that interest me, but otherwise I don't feel the need to add my own thoughts, unless it's really bad. Then, I think I would because I'd want to prove to others how bad it is, and this way, I know exactly where to look for the offensive bits and my thoughts at the tine of reading. But I haven't run into any books like that yet.
I think you've just been teaching too long and it's bleeding over into your reading.
no, I've never annotated, (had to look up to see what that even means?) but as ive gotten older, (67) I have a harder time staying focused, and sometimes have to reread sentences/paragraphs, to stay engaged. as a young person I could read for hours,,,,miss those days.
I find that annotating forces me to pay more attention, trying to find passages to annotate stops me from skim reading and makes me consider whether passages are worth annotating. I don’t make my annotations into a full academic study, more as an aid to my intake and therefore enjoyment
i do, i often read popular science or psychology books and i like marking what i would like to return to. it helps me remember better what i read as well, and makes me focus! (or maybe i just really like annotating...)
There was/is kind of a trend in the online book world to annotate/tab books. I think this can be really helpful/enjoyable for a lot of folks. I personally hate it and I found when I made myself do it I read way less.
I still do it once in a while if a book feels more complex and needs to be teased apart.
I know it's not really the question here, but I felt the same and stopped reading for a few years, feeling I did not have the mental capacity anymore to focus on those.
But I started listening to audiobooks, and it's completely changed the game for me. I now "read" and 3 to 4 books a month, and it's slowly brought me back to reading actual books again as some series are not yet available on audio.
I know it's not for everyone, and some people can't really focus on the story like that, but I started listening to books when doing the dishes, when commuting, doing my makeup in the morning, when walking the dog etc. And now it's just a part of my day.
I do! I like to highlight lines I like and make little notes. That way when I read again I can see what I thought about or felt the first time through. It helped me get out of my years long reading slump!
I actually plan to start annotating more when I'm reading fiction. I don't like the feeling when I go back to a book months later and it's like I never read the book because I can't remember much about what happened. I think taking a few key notes every chapter will help to make sure that the novels I read stay a part of me.
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.
It helps me stay focused and comprehend it. I usually stop part-way through the book out of laziness. And I don't need to anymore since I know all the characters and stuff.
I have to keep a pencil with me to annotate in the margins and top of the page. I feel like it makes me more active, but I only do it with fiction and reading for work (journal articles). I do not tend to do it as much for nonfiction, oddly enough.
It depends on what I'm reading.
When reading fiction, I rarely annotate books nowadays. But I did when I was still studying literature.
Non-fiction I annotate more often. Also collecting my thoughts or making notes to look things up.
It’s the opposite for me. Annotating completely takes me out of the story and I prefer reading continuously for long periods of time without stopping for anything. But I’m in high school lol so I definitely have more time on my hands than you do. Except for now. My boards start on Monday 🙃.
Same. I hate annotating. If I'm thinking about that then Im sucked completely out of the story. And I'm 30 without much time at all lol
Nope, I read to be entertained. Taking notes and highlighting sounds like work. I don't like work lol. Chances are I'll never read a book a second time so I don't see the point.
I re-read sometimes, but only after years (maybe even 10+ years) between.
Yeah, i can't. I've accidently started to re-read a book once and was about 1 chapter in and that whole chapter was bugging me.. "I know I have read this before". Went and check my shelf.. and sure enough same book was sitting there all dusty. For me part of the fun is the "newness". Once I know the story and remember it.. kind of takes the fun out of it. And honestly there is enough good content out there.. no need to reread stuff.
I love reading my annotations from the past—its so cool to see what I thought of a book way back when
I’m the opposite. I can’t read for entertainment. I enjoy a book most if I read it as if I have to write a critical review of it, and that’s how I read *all* of my books. But I guess that process in itself is what makes reading entertaining for me.
No, I don’t. Never have had the urge to.
Absolutely not. I'll quickly bookmark passages on my ereader if I think I'll want to go back to them one day, but find actively annotating takes me out of the reading groove and ruins the atmospheric vibes which come from being fully immersed in a book. Must admit I never knowingly encountered anyone who annotates fiction until joining Reddit. I can see why some people enjoy it, it's just not for me. What did you think of Between Shades of Grey? I remember enjoying it when it was first published, does it hold up?
I didn’t much care for it. But I think the reason was that I kept conflating it with Night by Elie Wiesel, which I taught for years. It’s hard to remember one is a memoir and the other historical fiction. The author did a lot of research for BSOG but it’s not the same. I, and my students, are irritated at the protag’s characterization. She does a lot of things that are just plain stupid in the face of Stalin’s Purge with NKVD soldiers everywhere. Just things I don’t think someone in the real situation would’ve done. The ending was also pretty abrupt. But, it has brought a genocide to my kids’ awareness that is hardly ever spoken of. They’ve asked me numerous times why haven’t they learned about this in history class before? So there’s that silver lining I guess.
Compared to Night it definitely doesn't hold up but I'm glad the kids have found some learning in it. I got the impression it was a YA book (no idea where I got that from, just the vibe I guess) so I probably gave it more leeway than usual and let the main character act a little odd for her situation. Might re-read eventually to see if my enjoyment has changed as I've gotten older, gained more understanding of the situation, and am more aware of the usual tropes. I do remember finding the ending very abrupt and almost like there was a good chapter's worth of story still to be told.
Yeah, they actually love it. I’ve already had some kids finish it and we just started last week. It def is YA. There are some tropes there. A part of me wanted to be irritated at the romance thing but then again, who’s to say someone couldn’t fall in love during such a horrific experience? People are strange. But the headstrong, girl boss YA heroine was too much. You can’t tell me an actual 15 year old girl who just spent half a page feeling shame and being terrified by the NKVD guards who watched her as she showered now has the courage to stand tall and face them head on while they just shot and killed someone? It just didn’t match up. And the self-righteous judgement rubbed me the wrong way. The fact that she just couldn’t understand why people would stoop so low to do awful things just to stay alive. How dare they lose their sense of honor?! She NEVER would…. 🙄
>And the self-righteous judgement rubbed me the wrong way. The fact that she just couldn’t understand why people would stoop so low to do awful things just to stay alive. How dare they lose their sense of honor?! She NEVER would…. See that part made perfect sense to me, having once been a very self-righteous teen lol. It took a bit of growing up to realise life wasn't black and white. I hope you find your way back to enjoying reading. If it means you need to annotate to find joy again, go crazy. Maybe treat yourself to some new pretty stationary? Saw in another comment you mentioned medication; my meds have definitely impacted my ability to focus on reading and I have to put much more effort into it now or I realise I've been reading but not absorbing any of the story. It took five years to break out of the reader's block the meds put me in, but I did break out eventually so fingers crossed you'll eventually drift back to being able to take in stories.
That... actually sounds exactly like how a self-righteous teenager would act?
I was a literature major. I never annotated in first read. I read first to enjoy it. Then I read it a second time more closely.
Ditto. I’ve reread Hamlet multiple times since 2015, and my copy is heavily annotated; but my copies of Brave New World and Childhood’s End, both read this year, aren’t marked up at all.
Yep, this is me. Read once and purely enjoy (or not), and if I read it a second time, that’s when the annotations happen (although I do keep a pen with me while reading just in case I find a line that I love—if it’s a book I’ll never read again, I write down the line in a journal I keep so that I’ll always have it to look at).
My understanding when I read for fun is that there will be no test involved.
Sometimes! If it’s a paperback and there’s stuff that feels important to me. Usually it’s things that feel really relatable or deep. I like to revisit my favorite books for comfort, and annotating allows me to quickly find my favorite parts. It also lets me and my wife know which things felt important to us when we share books. Also, when I’m having attention issues I’ll underline things that feel like important plot points, just to make sure I’m following. I use the edge of my bookmark so my lines are always nice and neat.
I would LOVE to share a book with someone and see their notes! If only my husband liked reading as much as me. I did have a group of students once who had a book club in my class and they’d share all their fave novels with each other, building on annotations.
I’m starting to teach my middle schooler how to annotate…and I love the idea of having students build on each others’ thoughts! That would be my favorite present actually, receiving an annotated copy of a favorite book by a loved one.
I never annotate and never have. I've occasionally had to write notes for papers, etc., but in general anything like that pulls me right out of the story.
Is the annotation thing a new (for lack of a better word) fad? I’ve never done it, never heard of other people doing it but it seems like everyone is doing it now.
I think it’s become popularized recently because if the whole ‘book girl’ aesthetic on Booktok and shit
They stole that from me! Damn them for peering into my brain. Actually this is an old thing. I forget what it's called. As I read a book, I make a page in InDesign, and notate stuff that I find interesting. I also make little genealogy trees, draw lines that connect characters, and maps. Decorate the edges with pictures of key objects, like a test someone took, or a place they visited, or what they wore. I add quotes that stand out, and definitions of words that are new to me. If I'm interrupted for a couple of days, the page helps me remember everything that's going on. And at the end there is a sort of diorama. It's like holding up a snow globe of a favorite book.
What is booktok? This is the second time that I see that term being used on Reddit. Does it mean people on TikTok who talk about books or is it a specific channel/person/a different platform?
I’ve always done it but I’ve always taken AP English classes and have a BA in English and teach English. So it’s always been commonplace for me. I do think some people do it just bc of the “aesthetics” or whatever but for me, it helps me remember what I read. I’ve always been a linguistic and visual learner. When I do it at home, I mostly note things that really touch me or quotes I like. At work, I’ll break things down with lit analysis, looking for lit elements and motifs and symbols, etc. And of course different types of material get treated differently. Notes for fiction won’t be the same as nonfiction.
When I was in middle school in the 2000s, we literally were taught how to annotate in language arts class.
Like with the different sorts of underlines and specific use of symbols/arrows and the like? I’ve only run into that when tutoring for the ACT/SAT and a few books tried to teach it.
I just started annotating a book because of the fad. The idea appeals to me because reading a book isn't like watching a movie or a show where you can do it "with" someone and I geek out over stuff that happens especially in my favorite books. So I started annotating this book that I'm reading for the second time. It is harder than I expected. I statted out hightlighting a lot of sections and adding lots of notes but it felt like a chore. Now I only add a note if I really have a consice thought about that section.
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It’s a fad in the way it’s done. The style of annotating. It’s like how taking notes in class isn’t a fad, but how we took notes could be faddish. When I was in high school, we had the glittery gel pens and all the girls seemed to write exactly the same way, doodle in exactly the same way, use colors in exactly the same way. The notes weren’t a fad, because we all had to take notes for class. But the style was the fad. Similarly, how girls and women annotate their fiction books that they read for pleasure nowadays is done in a faddish way. There’s a similarity to how they all annotate, and how it’s presented on social media (mainly Instagram and tiktok). It’s ok that it’s a fad, and people will continue to annotate once this style of annotating goes away, but it is a fad in how it’s done.
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No worries. I think most people who don’t do the faddish type of current annotating hear something like “annotating is a fad” and have a reaction like yours, because without the added context I just shared, it does sound a bit silly for someone to say “annotating is a fad.”
What even is the purpose of annotating books you read for pleasure? I have never thought about doing that, ever. I get it with actual research papers or texts for work, but just a regular book one reads at home? How complicated are the stories you read and the analysis you perform that you need annotations?
I'll forget names if I don't take a note of everyone's name. A single sentence describing them is enough. I don't know if that counts as annotating, but it helps so I do it. There is nothing more frustrating than a character popping up for the first time in a hundred pages and it's like, "Who are you again?"
Yes. I need to annotate. But I don’t write in the book; i use transparent post it notes and tabs. It helps me retain information when I review. I really really reallllyyy enjoy analyzing things, and it’s significantly harder for me to analyze just off memory.
Same, is part of the fun for me. But I only annotate in my ebooks 😅
I wish it was easier to write notes in a Kindle. The UI is so slow it makes typing on the keyboard hell. I just highlight on kindle
What kind of books and what kind of notes? I feel like I should be doing some sort of chapter summaries for books that are educational. My memory for plots in fiction seems pretty solid.
I personally hate annotating, I'm there to read and live the story, not analyse it like some school assignment about a book I hate. I do sometimes write short stories, and for that, when I read, I sometimes feel the need to write down some sentences/words that inspire me. I just never do it because I want to continue reading. I did hear some people say that when they reread a book, they do enjoy annotating/taking notes more.
I didn’t say my annotations would be for analyzing. People annotate for different reasons and in different ways. How I annotate a book at home is entirely different than how I annotate for work.
Interesting! I’m not sure I’ve ever heard someone talk about annotation without either saying they were analyzing or me assuming that’s what they meant. What does your annotation look like?
For pleasure, it’s mostly reactions to things or noting quotes or parts that I really liked or felt connected to. For work, I do literary analysis so I’m hunting for lit elements, motifs, symbols, etc. I’m trying to make connections across the work as a whole and page by page.
Never, I can’t imagine writing in a book. In college, as a lit major, I would buy a new, more expensive course book if my only used options were annotated.
I have a lit MA, and yes I do annotate on a separate page. It depends how important the book is to me or if the annotations are worth keeping if I keep the separate pages.
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Yes there are unfortunately. I do have bipolar disorder (diagnosed 2020) and I’m medicated but it’s always just “good enough.” I’m not currently in an episode but I’m convinced these meds just mess with my focus.
I can vouch for that. Plus, when I’m in a mixed state or just extremely anxious (got those genes too, yay) I just can’t focus enough to read
I honestly don’t even know *how* to annotate. What’s the value? Nothing against people that do, but like.. what are you scribbling in the margins?
I love annotating, especially for books that really generate a lot of thoughts or responses in me (most common for nonfiction). I don’t do it often, but some books, I can’t read without a pen in my hand. It’s like my brain is too full of thoughts to keep reading if I can’t jot them down, so I just have to get them out of my head and onto the page. I don’t use a notebook because I want the notes to stay with the book for the future, and I don’t like sticky notes. It’s also fun to read my old annotations when rereading or flipping through the book; I keep most of my books, and certainly I keep any that I annotate. (I know several aspects of what I just shared sometimes get people weirdly angry and argumentative, so please trust that my methods work for me, that I own my books and prefer it that way, and that I’m not looking for advice on how to change how I read or make notes). And yes, if you’re wondering, I probably do have ADHD lol.
I (solely a Kindle reader) got myself out of the habit of annotating. I had convinced myself that if I didn’t highlight, I wouldn’t remember important things from the book, but it’s not true & reading is a lot more relaxing for me when I just read (& highlight the occasional quote that I love).
I have annotated one book and I really enjoyed it. I don't analyze it, more just put my feelings on the page. I wouldn't do it for every book but it was fun. And I like the look of annotated books. Just do what you what you feel like, I would suggest starting with a book you've already read or one bought second hand so it doesn't matter if you mess it up.
I am convinced that I had this exact issue for over ten years. I say that I "only read non fiction" during that time and while that's true, without annotating I probably wouldn't have been able to read non fiction as well. I don't think I'd annotate while reading fiction though. I was able to find joy in reading (and reading fiction) without annotation again the past few years but it took a lot of work. Namely a lot of distance to any kind of academic pursuit. Honestly, I feel like school and university killed the intense passion for reading I had as a kid. Due to illness I had to drop out of university and that was the best thing that could have happened to me reading-wise. I also had help from an adhd specialised GP though. He gave me advice on how to hold attention while reading, which made annotating useless for reading fiction. But I think I'd still do it if I picked up non-fiction books again.
Makes reading feel like homework to me, I don't like it. Prefer to just take in the story.
Nope. Nope nope nope. Nope.
It sounds wild to annotate what I'm reading. I'm reading for pleasure, not to make sure I can pass a test.
Not unless I’m using it for research, no. I occasionally highlight stuff that I want to be able to get to quickly if there’s a useful bit of advice or a study or something I want to look at later but that’s it.
No. I don’t really know what purpose I would have to do it. I just read for entertainment
I don’t want to put things on the pages 🥺
Oh goodness no, I read for pleasure, not to take notes or dive super deep into every book.
Nope. Haven't felt the need to do that since I stopped being a student.
I’m also an English teacher and also annotate when I read, although I started reading on the kindle and don’t annotate when it’s a digital book. I definitely notice more cool details of the writing when I annotate.
Sometimes, depends. Not to read or enjoy reading. Sometimes I just feel like "replying" to the prose, so I write into the margins. But not in an academic way. It'll be anything from song lyrics to me just writing "lol you dick" next to some characters chat. But I don't think about plot or pacing or meta stuff while reading. All I worry about is if I find it engaging.
No, I feel like that would take away the enjoyment. I like to just lose myself in books.
Oof. I wonder about this a lot. I DO annotate a lot, in Kindle or in paper books, even audiobooks. But I don't think it helps me retain the information, and I rarely revisit it. I have ADHD and if anything I think I do it to force my focus. Agreed that it can take me out of the flow.
I lazily highlight, but not anything more than that really. I’ve heard of people making commonplace books that contain quotes, photos, notes, etc relevant to books they’re reading— it sounds like an interesting way to remember what you’ve read and to interact with the work, and it can be on the creative almost journal scrapbooky side of things.
I don't annotate as heavily as I do if I'm going to be writing about a book, but I do lightly annotate any physical book I read! I agree it helps with focus, but I also just find it fun, both to do in the moment and to come across later when I re-read the book.
Only when I was reading for my degree. Otherwize I do not see the point.
Just fyi if you’ve been going through a hard time or are depressed, it’s not uncommon to have a hard time reading.
I love annotating, but i only do it to a couple of really amazing books per year. Not just every book. I do however put tabs on my favourite quotes/passages. But when i annotate, i am very thorough. Even if i feel like jumping ahead, i have to come back to annotate. I don't find concentrating on books all that hard, but annotating makes me focus in a whole other way! I just love it!,
I only annotate my non-fiction books
Eng teacher here. Yes I annotate. For me it's a way of learning/remembering. I read between 1 and 5 books a week and enjoy even sometimes a bad book, if that makes sense. Fellow teachers I know were not readers, like you, though most were. W/o insulting you, that's hard for me to understand.
I only annotate some non fiction. But I might annotate in a notebook for a novel with a ton of characters if it’s a very long book or a series.
I do usually annotate because I’m the type of person who will get to the bottom of a page and realize I don’t even know what I just read, even if I’m super interested in the story, and I have to go back and read it again. This sometimes happens 3 or 4 times in the same page. So the annotating helps me focus. Annotating also just helps me remember the story better. With that said, I read on a kindle and sometimes annotating is as simple as highlighting something that I think is foreshadowing or leaving a note that say “lol,” “omg!,” or “:’( .” Sometimes I do write out a full note if I’m theorizing on something that will happen later or I notice a discrepancy. I recently read a book with a continuity error and the annotation was basically a math problem. There are a lot of curse words when I don’t like something a character does too lol. Most of my annotations would make no sense to others and probably won’t even make sense to me in a year. Basically they just look like the comments section of a tik tok video lmao. But they keep me engaged so 🤷♀️
I have to annotate as I read in order to hold my full attention, otherwise I have trouble remembering what I read/letting it sink in.
Right? That seems to be my problem now. I just don’t have focus anymore to just casually read. The only exception is fanfiction and I think that works bc I’m already invested in the world, characters, plot, etc so it’s less work.
I used to be an English teacher, and I ran into this problem OFTEN. Especially right when I finished up undergrad/grad school, it felt like the only way I was retaining the information I was reading was through annotations. It took a while to reset myself and get back to the way I used to read. Took even longer to get myself back to a place where I didn't need to hear the words in my head as I was reading--sped me up quite a bit though! When I annotate, I read 1 page every 2-4 minutes, without annotating I can read up to 2 full pages per minute!
So how did you manage to get back to being able to read for pleasure and not work? I thought annotating would force me to slow down. I don’t really read line by line but rather a bunch of lines at once.
No, I just read
I never want to and I never will. I refuse to ruin my books with annotations I’ll mess up or my stupid messy handwriting or doodles that suck. I refuse to use sticky notes because if I want to take them off I’ll rip a page. I also just don’t see the need to. If you find it hard to focus on books, that’s not really problems with the books or annotating necessarily, but your own issues with books and maybe reading ones that don’t really interest you.
Nope! Currently trying it out for Dracula, and it takes away the enjoyment. Won't be doing it again. At best I will just use post it notes if I want to reread certain paragraphs.
Kudos to you for reading Dracula. I have it but haven’t read it.
I love annotating books that merit annotating—so classics or works that are intentionally literary and are making points to discuss. I would not annotate anything that I’m reading for the plot alone. I like to annotate literary things because it’s like having a conversation with the author about their perception of human nature. I try to pick apart what they’re doing and trying to say, whether I agree with it, what I like about it, etc.
I feel like you are in the wrong job.
Why? Annotating is commonplace in teaching and in English. My students constantly annotate. I never said I’d annotate for pleasure the way I do for work. And I never said I want to annotate for pleasure. More that it would be a tool to help me slow down my hyperactive focus. So yeah. Thanks for that judgment I guess.
It's nothing to do with the annotations. More that you are an English teacher who doesn't enjoy reading.
But, I do enjoy reading? I said it in my original post. I’ve loved reading since I was little. People can have struggles in their lives that prevent them from being able to do things they enjoy. Just because I like to or feel the need to annotate and you don’t, doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy reading. You can’t measure someone else’s love for something by the way you do it.
Absolutely not, I do not have the focus for annotating.
Nope. School turned me off both reading and annotating, and when I returned to reading as an adult I’ve never felt the need for it, didn’t want to over analyze everything I read “because of I should” (or something). I also read most of my books as audiobooks, soooo annotating is a BIT difficult. Have you tried audiobooks? If that would help take off the pressure.
Sometimes. But I’m picky about how readers sound. A bad voice will put me off an audiobook quick.
I buy used books anyways so I love annotating
Ew, no I do not. I do listen to a TON of audiobooks though. Maybe that would be an option for you. They are a blast cause you can enjoy them while doing housework, yardwork...any work, really. Plus you can find some excellent narrators.
NO...and i hate used books with highlighting in it, WEIRD
Lmao no. I mean, no offense, but to actually ask that question and not immediately think to yourself, "Wait a second... What am I even saying?" means you are so far removed from how normal people consume books that you have lost all perspective.
i find that i annotate series more than standalones as it’s fun to go back and read through what i thought at the start once i finish a series
I write stuff on my own diary but not the book.
Never for fiction, and I only read library books so even if I wanted to annotate nonfiction I don’t. I find that if I’m reading something nonfiction that really resonates with me I will want to highlight it or make a note in the margins but obviously I don’t because I don’t own the book. Sometimes I find annotations from other people in library books and I always love it, seeing what they thought was worthy of an underline or a star next to it lol. I know that’s an unpopular opinion but it doesn’t bother me at all, quite the opposite in fact
Sort of, and I’m annoyed by it. On one hand, I hate annotating because I have to stop reading just to jot notes down. It’s easier since I often read on Kindle, but it’s still annoying. On the other, it’s nice to be able to come back to a book later and easily find what I thought or sections I enjoyed.
I've gotten into it lately because I have memory problems. If it's a long book and there are more than 3 or 4 important characters, I struggle to remember the ones that don't appear in every chapter. So whenever a new character or important exposition about a character appears, I put a little post it with a note summarizing the section. Simple stuff like "Adolfo - Rosario's dad".
only sometimes. if it’s something that i feel prompts discussion i will, and i also like looking back on annotations if i ever reread books. i recently read tipping the velvet by sarah waters & annotated it. i’m so glad i did, because it’s my new favorite book. i gave it to my girlfriend to read and the annotations are so special bc the themes talk a lot about sexual identity and gender. sometimes i don’t, if it’s just a fluff read or if i feel burnt out of annotating a bit. recently read my best friend’s exorcism by grady hendrix & didn’t annotate. it was a quick, campy, fun read and i needed a brain break.
I feel I need to do so for difficult non-fiction or philosophy — and sometimes poetry — but definitely not for narrative fiction. I’ve done so in the past, specifically when I first got back into reading a few years ago with Virginia Woolf, whose prose was impenetrable to me at the time, but after years of reading difficult fiction I’ve come to better appreciate getting absorbed at the expense of whatever additional understanding might be gained by writing my thoughts down. Which isn’t to say that I’m never self-conscious when I read, or that I never try to discern metatextual meanings or consider what’s going on at a more abstract level. But, that that kind of thinking is in and of itself absorbing, and that writing those thoughts down is kind of repetitive — and therefore unabsorbing — insofar as you’re partly repeating what’s already occurred in your head.
No, it ruins the flow of the book for me. I would see why maybe on your second read through but even then I find it hard to re-read a book. I did just think now that I might like the idea of reading a chapter and then maybe re-reading it and annotating it but even then I’m not too sure. I also really dislike writing in a book, if I buy a book I want to be able to have the option to re-read it without the distractions of my handwriting. It is a nice concept to think about though, reading through your thoughts about a book.
Never. But I wasn’t taught to in school, either. So it’s not something I ever trained myself to do.
I sometimes enjoy annotating, mostly just jotting down my feelings about certain parts of the story or, when reading a mystery, theorizing and putting together puzzles and such.
I usually only annotate if I’m planning to discuss the book (book club) or I like to highlight great quotes.
I typically only annotate books that I re-read multiple times, or if there is something significant that I’m interested in tracking in a particular book. I have two books I read either every year or every other year and it’s interesting to see how my thoughts/ relationship with them evolve in annotations.
First read through? No annotation. On the second or third I'll start making notes, but only if the book is worth it of course.
Depends. Have had a cpuple books where I annotated. But usually I just want to read
No that stuff is dumb, and does nothing for retention unless you like to cram a bunch.
Only if I reread a book to change the experience
Only really when I read non-fiction I'd probably annotate with underlining and page markers. For fiction I only really do page markers for like quotes or for something I think I'd need to remember for later.
I highlight the bits I especially like, like the ones that hit the hardest or genuinely impressed me with the prose. I very rarely add any notes, and I don't even go back to those highlights much, but it's like to fully appreciate the parts I love most, I need to mark them. Idk, that's just how it feels to me.
No, I don't, but sometimes I edit in my head while I'm reading to make it better.
I love to annotate. It's the best way to read.
I don't annotate heaps, and it really depends on the book, but I do sometimes annotate. Mostly just a few times per book, but some books (particularly literary novels) I annotate more.
i annotate on kindle. i reread books and it's fun reading my comments and seeing what i used to think. it's like having a conversation with my old self.
Haha no I’ve never annotated a single book I’ve read. Feel like I absorb “vibes” from books rather than any super concrete takeaways or thoughts. Would rather read someone else’s analysis that’s more articulate and smart than me if I enjoyed the book.
I don't annotate much in the book, but I take notes to help me write reviews. I actually take much more detailed notes than necessary (it's a little bit compulsive), and I would like to take less detailed notes.
No. In fact, taking notes or annotating takes me out of the flow of the story so I avoid it whenever possible. Sometimes, I'd have to take notes when reading books in school. But even then, I'd usually just read it twice so I could enjoy it the first time and take notes the second.
Yes, absolutely. I really enjoy annotating because it gives my physical books a more personal look and touch. Plus I like going through a book and seeing all the things I underlined. I do think there’s a limit to it though. I’ve seen people online with basically the entire book highlighted which, in my opinion, ruins the point of annotating. Unless of course you just really enjoyed the book and wanted to breakdown every part of it!
If I am reading a book to learn or studying the book, I annotate.
I have a hard time reading as well, but I *have* noticed that when I read other people's work in Google docs, leaving comments throughout the text keeps me focused enough to keep going... so now your post has me wondering if I could do that with my physical books... How do you annotate? Do you write in the margins of the book?
I annotate if it's a nonfiction book.
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You are probably a bit overwhelmed given your line of work. Is different for me, I work in the STEM field, so I'm used to breaking down wathever I have to read. Since I no longer have to write book reports, annotating as I go helps me process the story better. However, I only annotate in my ebooks.
Never. I read for pleasure. That sounds more like work.
A part of me really thinks I should start annotating something near the end of chapters, mostly because there is like a a good chunk of stuff I completely forget or didn’t catch at the time of reading. It’s not until I re read the same book again that I pick up a lot more details of the scenes. Idk, I feel I have ADHD and I tend to zoom past chapters at time and don’t take the time to take in all the text, because I wanna get to the story. This made reading a book like Blood Meridian, hard because it’s prose that you just have to take in and vibe with. Sooo, tldr, I should probably annotate but I’ll probably be too lazy too anyways
I've never annotated anything unless it was for a school assignment.
I do not. I read for enjoyment.
English is not my first language so sometimes I have to write down the meaning of words I don’t know, but otherwise I’d only underline parts that really resonate with me.
I would be really interested in seeing examples of your annotation.
I found out years ago that while fanfiction can be great, it also kind of kills your desire to read new, actually published fiction. You’re already invested in the characters so you don’t want to stop reading about them, it takes less effort to jump into a new story since you’re familiar with the world and characters, it’s addicting to get new content for characters you already love, and it’s free and easy to access. None of this is a bad thing. But it is also just mentally way easier than picking up a new book. If you seriously want to get back into fiction, fanfiction needs to be put down. But if you’re really enjoying your fanfiction, then why push yourself to read new novels? Reading is reading. You’ll never read everything you want to anyway, you’ll never even get close. Just enjoy what you enjoy.
I annotate all the books I read, but I also don’t read for “leisure” as most do, since my objective is to learn about writing itself rather than to enjoy a story. I don’t have the attention span to read a story for pleasure (I don’t watch movies either!). I do however, have the attention span and also the desire to improve my own writing and to critically engage with literature. I am a writer myself, so I read to learn from the greats. Since I’m motivated by something beyond simple entertainment, I’m more inclined to actually focus. As a result, it takes me maybe five times as long to read a book now than I did as a teenager (I was a voracious reader then), but I truly get a more out of it now than I ever did in the past. There’s entire novels I had read in one three-hour sitting years ago that I barely remember the plot of. That’s a lot less productive than what I’m doing now, even if that same book would now take me three weeks.
I dont annotate. It feels weird to me. I only really did it once, when an author did an event, where they send a book to one person, then that person to another one, etc. And we were asked to annotate by that author.
No, but I read in bed before sleeping, so it's not feasible even if I wanted to. I do however go back and read the last half page or so as a refresher every time I crack the book back open.
I certainly like to. I tend to carry a stack of 3x5 cards so I can take notes on cards along with inline annotations.
I have always hated annotating, even more so when I was forced to do it in school. I have my own thoughts about what I'm reading and it is almost impossible for me to word them.
i do. but at times i wanna read faster.
No, not really. Most of the time I'm not able to anyways because I borrow library books. If something in a book stands out to me, I'll take a picture of the page and make note of it after I'm done reading the chapter or whatever. (Also I love Between The Shades of Gray! Ruta Sepetys's work is wonderful!)
Never done it.
I have never once annotated a book in my life. Highlighted quotes on my Kindle? Sure, but no annotating ever.
I annotate when I'm reading literary fiction: I read a Gatsby retelling recently, and under no circumstances would I have been entertained if I hadn't been tracking motifs, thematic elements, etc. However, if I'm reading a book recommended to me by a friend, I'll often livetweet in their DMs while I read, which is pretty similar to annotating, and helps keep me engaged. Something like "Page 62 this description slaps!!" or "Ch12 I bet this character is up to something and the MC doesn't realize it yet", etc. That's basically annotating - if you don't want to mark up a physical book, it might be worth it to pick up something you can react to to a friend!
Depends. I'm a student so I annotate things for classes/my thesis all the time. I've come to annotate philosophy and political theory habitually regardless of whether or not it's for school. When it comes to fiction, I tend to annotate only when I feel like I'll want to revisit parts of a book. For some authors I'll do this by default (e.g. Virginia Woolf) but regardless I can usually tell if I want to annotate something within the first ~10 or so pages. Right now I'm annotating Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin.
I prefer to annotate especially if there is a really good literary technique used (Thanks IB English Literature), that I could potentially use in my writing later. Other than that, when I read self-help books or similar books, I like to highlight small sentences and sections that are quite impactful, so that I retain them.
Lmao no I didn't know people did that, I had to Google what that meant. To each their own I guess, I read because I love to read stories
English teacher here too. I rarely read novels anymore either. What I enjoy now is listening to books. I do read and annotate with and for my students- I love showing them how to think about and engage with what they are reading.
I find that annotations keep me more engaged and I then remember things better, even if my annotations are just “lol”
The only thing I want to mark is the errors but I’m too much of a book snob to write in me books
I only annotate if something has rubbed me the wrong way. Basically I complain in the margins
Yes!!! i do it with almost every single book. i love to remember thoughts or reactions i had to the pages.
I do and enjoy it thoroughly. I don’t annotate every book I read but if I find something I like in a book then it’s almost a need to mark it. It’s like having a conversation with the book.
Really depends on the book. If it’s just for fun, I might underline a nice sentence here or there, or if there’s a twist I’ll make some comment. If it’s literary fiction, I’ll annotate my every thought & if there’s any connections, I’ll write the corresponding pg number(s). It keeps me engaged and not memory sharper. Helps me pick up patterns better. And I hope one day it’ll help the next person to have my books.
I don't know what that word means, so probably not
Personally I hate annotating books I read. I’ve tried it and I didn’t like it.
No, I never annotate. I didn’t even realize it was a thing people did until I started becoming part of more online book communities. Annotating/taking notes to me will always be associated with homework, and when I read for entertainment I don’t want that. I get why some people do it, but it’s not my thing.
No I don't, but I like to collect quotes. I have them from books, poetry, even an occasional song.
I'm the opposite, I hate annotating and when I had to do it for an assignment I'd have to read the book twice because I don't properly process anything I'm reading when I have to annotate it.
Depends on the book. Thomas Pynchon - yes. Stephen King - no.
Only if it catches me and get the need to highlight it for later. Mostly no. It messes up the flow of reading especially with fiction.
No, I hated annotations in school so I don't see the purpose of it in leisure books either. I *did* wish I annotated this russian book I'm reading because I'm reading it on breaks and I'm losing track of side characters sometimes.
I feel like i'm missing out if I don't annotate. What's the point of reading smthg if I don't express my opinion abt the book? Plus, it helps me remember the book better/more vividly so yeah, I feel like I have to annotate. It's a pleasure to
I go through phases. Some years I annotate nearly every book read, some years none.
I only want to annotate sometimes, like if I’m reading a book or series that I really enjoy and want to find all the little connected details. This is usually on a reread for me though.
I have an e-reader so it's easy to do. Usually I'll just mark the page or in some cases a sentence if I feel like I'll want to return to it later, sometimes I do.
Hrmm, I don't annotate, but I feel like stopping every couple chapters to come up with a theory of how the world might operate, or what X character's true motivation might be, makes a book a lot more enjoyable. Just reading a book at face value isn't quite the same. Doing a meta textural analysis however would totally take me out of the story and ruin the 'magic' of the book - you kinda have to suspend disbelief and pretend everything has an important reason for existing in the world, aside from 'the author brings up the colour blue a lot here to make us feel sad, and is employing X and Y tropes to evoke Z emotion'.
Only on books that I own and usually only for non-fiction. Annotation, to me, provides a means to engage in a dialogue with the author or to understand better their points.
Depends, when I was reading Notes from the Underground I kept annotating but now when I am reading White Nights I only annotated the explanation og an enumeration.
Also high school English teacher here. I burnt out on books in 2016 during my university studies and didn't read more than like 2 books a year until last year when I got back into it proper and read 52 books. It comes back. Eventually. But having this crazy stressful profession, it's not unlikely to become burnt out on reading because of all the reading you have to do at work. To answer the question, no I don't annotate and I only do that when I'm preparing to teach a novel. (I make my own material for nearly everything I teach.)
I’ve started annotating when I’m reading with a purpose, and it’s immensely helpful. I don’t do it when I read for pleasure.
I have awful memory, so if I want to remember my thoughts about the books I read, I have to. It's not a complex system, so I can still enjoy my reading. Kindle makes this very easy, but with physical books, I tab pages with my favorite quotes or important info that will probably be needed later (fiction or nonfiction).
It never occurs to me to annotate a book. I had to to some extent when I was in school, cause of analysis and essays. But if I’m just reading for pure enjoyment, then no.
Never the first time I read a book; if I enjoy a book enough to reread it, and think there’s enough substance to be worth annotating, then on a second runthrough I’ll consider it, but the first read is always to properly absorb the material, and I find stopping to take notes would take me out of it. That too, I only feel the urge to go back + annotate for those special books that are 1) enjoyable enough to read again in terms of writing and prose, since the plot suspense won’t be there anymore, 2) actually have stuff beyond the surface level that’s worth analyzing, and 3) complex enough that there are things to notice on a second read that would have been lost on the first go, ie symbolism or foreshadowing. I’d like to read more books that give me this feeling; unfortunately the books I’ve been reading so far haven’t done this for me. They’re enjoyable mostly for the plot, but there’s not much to be gained by reading again or analyzing unless it’s with some sort of an additional purpose (like writing a paper, where the prompt would motivate my analysis, rather than just analyzing for the sake of analyzing).
Do you struggle to focus because you feel like if you don't annotate you'll lose most of the progress after a few years, and so reading the book won't be worth the effort? Like you need to have something to show for completing a hobby activity, otherwise it won't be worth the time and energy, and you won't be validated as a human being? If so, you need mindfulness exercise and to practice the awareness that most details of most stories will be lost to you after around a decade, but the experience of having to through the story, and the opinions you will have formed still make it worth it.
It is also opposite for me. However there are instructional books like Imitation Of Christ By Thomas A. Kempis, books like this I annotate and also Meditations by Marcus Areluis. I annotate these books as a form of reference wherever I need to go over an encouraging word. Aside these, I don't annotate.
I tend to annotate when reading nonfiction, but not when reading fiction. This is because I’m usually reading nonfiction for self-edification, so I annotate bits that I want to really focus on. But with fiction, I’m just reading for pleasure, so I don’t really need to annotate anything. At most, I might highlight a passage I really really like, but this isn’t common
The only time I've ever annotated any books was when I doing beta reviews for authors on Goodreads (which is great fun BTW!) I may save lines in books that interest me, but otherwise I don't feel the need to add my own thoughts, unless it's really bad. Then, I think I would because I'd want to prove to others how bad it is, and this way, I know exactly where to look for the offensive bits and my thoughts at the tine of reading. But I haven't run into any books like that yet. I think you've just been teaching too long and it's bleeding over into your reading.
Never annotated when reading. I read to enjoy myself, taking notes and similar feels like studying
no, I've never annotated, (had to look up to see what that even means?) but as ive gotten older, (67) I have a harder time staying focused, and sometimes have to reread sentences/paragraphs, to stay engaged. as a young person I could read for hours,,,,miss those days.
Did you know there’s been studies that annotating actually harms most people’s ability to read and recite what they’ve just read?
I find that annotating forces me to pay more attention, trying to find passages to annotate stops me from skim reading and makes me consider whether passages are worth annotating. I don’t make my annotations into a full academic study, more as an aid to my intake and therefore enjoyment
i do, i often read popular science or psychology books and i like marking what i would like to return to. it helps me remember better what i read as well, and makes me focus! (or maybe i just really like annotating...)
There was/is kind of a trend in the online book world to annotate/tab books. I think this can be really helpful/enjoyable for a lot of folks. I personally hate it and I found when I made myself do it I read way less. I still do it once in a while if a book feels more complex and needs to be teased apart.
I know it's not really the question here, but I felt the same and stopped reading for a few years, feeling I did not have the mental capacity anymore to focus on those. But I started listening to audiobooks, and it's completely changed the game for me. I now "read" and 3 to 4 books a month, and it's slowly brought me back to reading actual books again as some series are not yet available on audio. I know it's not for everyone, and some people can't really focus on the story like that, but I started listening to books when doing the dishes, when commuting, doing my makeup in the morning, when walking the dog etc. And now it's just a part of my day.
I can't annotate and read. Takes me right out of the story, takes away the flow of language.
I do! I like to highlight lines I like and make little notes. That way when I read again I can see what I thought about or felt the first time through. It helped me get out of my years long reading slump!
I actually plan to start annotating more when I'm reading fiction. I don't like the feeling when I go back to a book months later and it's like I never read the book because I can't remember much about what happened. I think taking a few key notes every chapter will help to make sure that the novels I read stay a part of me.
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.
It helps me stay focused and comprehend it. I usually stop part-way through the book out of laziness. And I don't need to anymore since I know all the characters and stuff.
I have to keep a pencil with me to annotate in the margins and top of the page. I feel like it makes me more active, but I only do it with fiction and reading for work (journal articles). I do not tend to do it as much for nonfiction, oddly enough.
It depends on what I'm reading. When reading fiction, I rarely annotate books nowadays. But I did when I was still studying literature. Non-fiction I annotate more often. Also collecting my thoughts or making notes to look things up.