I’ve been trying to post at least once a week and I feel like a way to be able to do that is to not allow myself to upload shorter posts! Since I’m interested in languages I may also upload language learning posts in the future!
Today’s short topic is annotating books! I think I’ve made a post about this in the past, but I’ve always been absolutely against doing anything to my book! Even if it was just adding sticky markers, it was a NO. Recently I’ve been reading a lot more on the Kindle app so I can annotate without feeling like I am committing a treacherous crime! After trying this for a few books that I’ve read I realised annotating books is just not for me and here are the reasons why:
- After finishing the book, I completely lose track of the emotions I felt when I first made that comment/note. So I end up looking back through my annotations (especially when writing a review) and feeling absolutely nothing?
- My reviews tend to be lengthy anyway, and this is just me writing based on my general opinion of the book and what I remembered. With annotations I ended up writing reviews that were essentially long essays and NOBODY has the time to read those 😬.
I would like to upload more discussion posts, I love interacting with people in the comments! So how do you feel about annotating books? Maybe I’m doing it wrong? Let me know in the comments!
abooknation 
When I was in high school, I had an English teacher who told us to mark up all of our books, highlighting in different colors and jotting down notes and questions, so we could get a deeper reading experience. I absolutely hated it and now, almost 20 years later, I find not doing so gives me a deeper reading experience. I don’t know, but something about having to focus on every line, every word, means I lose track of the story, the characters, and how I feel about what I’m reading, makes it too academic. Now I can’t stand annotating my books or even just writing basic notes about it. I can’t seem to remember the story or how I felt while reading when I do that!
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I remember the same when I was in school too! And I completely agree, at some points I feel like I’m just trying to find things to highlight rather than doing so because I need to 😂. It turns into an assignment!
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i annotate books really weirdly: I usually just highlight quotes I like on kindle, or underline them if it’s a physical book I own, and any actual notes I make are usually like “lol”, reactions or predictions about the plot
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Oooo this sounds fun! Kindle definitely makes things easier and I mean if it works it works!
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I’ve never been a person to annotate a book. The only exceptions being textbooks!
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I can’t even annotate bring myself to textbooks! 💀
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To annotate textbooks lol**
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I always write in books. Draw in them, Remake them and generally have fun with them.
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I do make notes in books but generally only ones I think I’ll re-read or refer back to. More commonly, I’ll write out a quote or a thought in reaction in my journal.
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As I have a tendency to over-highlight/underline, it’s pretty useless for further use anyway. Also, I often like books to go on a journey after they have given me a good time, e.g I love to let them free in the book-exchange shelves. And I do not like to find 2nd hand books where someone else has been leaving traces from their point of view. So for me, annotating is basically a no-go, but I do have a ‘quote note-book’ and love re-reading these quotes from time to time, independently whether I still own the book or not.
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Happily, I never had an instructor that advocated making annotations. My twin daughters, however, had such a teacher last year. They are juniors in high school and their English teacher required the kids to make two to three annotations on every page opening, at least one annotation per page. They couldn’t write in the books so had to write their comments on sticky notes, then place them in the book. It totally sucked the joy out of reading. My daughters have been avid readers since the first grade. It was sad to see how much they absolutely hated their English class this year. However, I decided to give the teacher the benefit of the doubt and I’ve been occasionally annotating sections of books that I find particularly noteworthy. Not sure how long I’ll keep it up.
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The only book that I write in is my Bible. It’s almost like an interactive diary at this point. Our daughters wrote their names in it as soon as they were old enough to do so. Those words are precious to me. 🙂
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I don’t write in books much because there’s no room, but I do like to tab them sometimes when I re-read them. I’m decorating one of my books with washi tape which has been fun and I think it looks great! Probably not for everybody though, it can take a long time lol.
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