How to Annotate a Book Example Guide
Evernote is one of the two big players in the “digital annotation apps” game. I love the way my books look after I’m reading. This was an expected effect because I was sure I would be annoyed by the way my books looked after I finished reading. Similarly to the characters in the book, I feel like I went on this journey with them. I also have been rereading books I’ve dabbled in annotating with and it’s so interesting to look back and see what I thought during a different point in my life. Whether reading for leisure or learning, knowing how to annotate can benefit your experience.
The first book I decided to annotate was about one year ago, and it was The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I started with my favorite book that I have read multiple times already so I could really focus on analyzing the text I was reading. If you are trying to figure out what the first book you annotate will be, I recommend choosing something you’ve read before, or a book in your favorite genre. This led me to look more into the subject where I found Youtube videos of people teaching others how they annotate their books.
My books contain highlights of lines that are impactful and full of meaning or lines that evoke emotion in me. I use the Tombow dual brush pens in pastel shades for this. Or you can simply use the page tabs wherever without caring about the colour. Since I don’t assign colours to themes and usually just use one colour per book, I choose a colour that matches the book cover. But when I was reading The Right Swipe, I added longer comments to highlight how CTE was spoken about, note my thoughts on the dating industry, etc. You can either pick one beforehand or decide later based on what you want to mark in the book.
You can also simply draw hearts or stars to mark parts you like. Writing comments can change based on genres and themes. The extent of my annotations are generally “this is so cute! ” and “OMG” unless I’m ranting about something.
To annotate a book, grab a highlighter or pencil if you can mark the book, or a pad of sticky notes if you can’t. Read the book slowly and carefully, underlining, highlighting, or noting interesting parts as you encounter them. Draw circles around key words and phrases, and include reflections, comments, and questions in the margins. If you’re annotating a longer book, write short summaries on sticky notes at the end of each section to jog your memory. Annotating a book is a great way to make notes on the text.
As a child, teenager, and young adult, my reading life has largely consisted of writing in my books, taking notes, dog-earing pages, et cetera. When I started buying more new releases , the books were so pretty that I felt badly about “harming” them in their pristine condition. Do you find yourself struggling to remember the content of a book after you have finished reading them? Or does it ever happen that you want to apply a book’s lessons, but you can hardly remember them?
When you’re reading 4+ books a month, it’s easy to forget why you loved the books you loved. Taking notes in my books helps me organize my thoughts for book clubs or podcast author interviews. It helps me convey just how important a book was to me at a particular time in my life. It’s like a little time capsule of who I am as a reader. Annotation is like a conversation between reader and text. Proper annotation allows students to record their own opinions and reactions, which can serve as the inspiration for research questions and theses.
These will help you identify the topic and main ideas you’ll focus on when you complete a close read. Annotating means actively engaging integra marketing with the text as we read through it. As a result, we can immerse ourselves in learning and engage our information processing system.
This year my goal was to annotate every book that I read so as to take my time over each story. I wanted to stop myself from zipping through literature and not taking it all in. I wanted to stop, slow down and get serious about words that people spent years writing.