Do you ever read books and after some time, can’t seem to remember what they’re about or how you felt about them? That’s the biggest problem I faced early on as a bookworm—I barely remembered the books I’d read.
Granted, I am a very forgetful person. I might have enjoyed a particular book but when asked about it months or sometimes even weeks down the road, I often couldn’t remember the specificities about why I’d liked it, and could only come up with general praises and the dreadful all-encompassing “Nice.”
I wanted to change that, so I put systems in place to make me remember everything I read.
In this article, I’ll introduce you to the exact methods I use to make notes on, annotate, critically read, and engage with books I read for leisure. They’re nothing fancy and don’t take too much time, but are super effective at helping me remember everything I read. I hope these tools will be able to help you remember everything you read too!
Why should we engage with our books more?
First, why do we even want to remember everything we read? I think this question is important because sticking to a system will be much easier if you know why you have that system set up in the first place.
To me, the true value of a book lies in the ideas, thoughts, feelings, and of course happiness we get from it. This means that if we don’t engage with a book on these fronts, we may be wasting its maximum potential.
So, the end goal isn’t to necessarily remember literally everything we read, but to engage more critically with books. Readers will get more meaning and joy from books if we think about them more, and being able to remember what we read will just come naturally as a by-product of this critical engagement.
I find that actively consuming a book gives me an exponentially richer reading experience—intellectually, emotionally, and sometimes even spiritually. Conversely, reading without some sort of critical eye makes me easily forget what I read and I often end up loving those books a little less.
Again, my methods are not elaborate at all, but they have helped me form more coherent opinions and understand my own thoughts better. Let’s get right into them!
While Reading...
I used to not do anything while reading a book—I just read and read until I got to the very last page. While this provided an uninterrupted reading experience, my thoughts kept escaping me and I couldn’t recall the exact ideas that popped into my head afterwards, which is such a shame because they’re gone forever.
After some trial and error, I realized that writing down your thoughts as you’re reading a book is equally important as writing down your thoughts after finishing a book. With these, I’ve purposefully made my methods to be as least invasive to the reading experience as possible while still being able to capture your thoughts.
1. For fiction — Capture beautiful or impactful quotes.
Fiction contains so many well-articulated and beautifully-crafted sentences that I want to remember and learn from! So, I take note of those.
Now, I don’t think highlighting or underlining sentences on the page itself is the best way to go about it. Research has already disproven the effectiveness of highlighting as a method to retain information. Highlighting also requires you to go out of your way to flip through a book you’ve already read before just to retrieve quotes, which doesn’t strike me as practical.
What I do instead is I take pictures of those quotes on my phone and then type them all up in my database (more on that later) after I finish the book. I’m reading The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton right now, and this is what one of my captured quotes looks like:
The goal at this stage is to just take pictures of quotes you love as you read along. We always have our phones with us anyway, and taking a picture only takes a hot second. By the end, you should have a collection of your favorite quotes on your phone!
2. For nonfiction — Capture the book's main arguments.
I do the same thing with nonfiction books; the only difference is that I also capture the book’s main arguments since nonfiction books primarily advance arguments in one way or another.
I particularly like reading nonfiction books on my Kindle because its highlight function automatically creates a separate file with all my highlights, which is handy because I always highlight so many things in nonfiction books.
For instance, I’m reading The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus on my Kindle right now, and this is how Kindle compiles my highlighted quotes:
This means that you only have to copy-paste these quotes onto your database later on instead of typing them up one by one, which is pretty convenient!
Also, I know that Kindles are not the cheapest things on earth but if you read a lot, then I think an E-reader of any kind will seriously be a great investment for you. Having one has tremendously increased how much I read as it makes taking notes and accessing books easier.
3. Use the Notes app on your phone to jot down any thoughts you have while reading the book.
My number one rule is that our brains are for thinking, not for remembering things (and science would agree with me). So, if you have random thoughts about a book as you’re reading it, as I’m sure you do, write them all down! Your brain is a dumbass and it will forget your wonderful ideas.
I personally just use the Notes app on my phone since I’m already using my phone to capture quotes. Writing your thoughts down only takes a couple of seconds, and it can be as messy and haphazard as you want! The important thing is to capture your thoughts at that particular moment in time and to store them somewhere where you won’t be able to forget them.
Try not to be self-conscious about your grammar or writing style while doing this because if you do, writing your thoughts down can become a daunting and stressful task instead of the fun and no-stakes activity it is. Remember, those Notes are for your eyes only.
I’m going to take The Age of Innocence as an example again. This is what my Notes on the book look like so far:
The sentences on my Notes can definitely be better. But again, the point here is not to have polished thoughts; it’s to have a place where you can dump all your thoughts! Just word vomit away on your Notes, and your future self will thank you.
After Reading...
Finished reading the book? Good. Now it’s time for some book post-mortem! I’m a ho for spreadsheets and organizational tools, which is why I go ham on my book notes, as you will see.
1. Reading Log
The first thing I do after finishing a book is to update my Reading Log, which is a spreadsheet I use to track all the books I’ve read on a year-to-year basis along with information on those books.
I use Google Sheets for this but you can use any application that will allow you to build tables. You can even do this in a notebook if you want.
My Reading Log for 2020 looks like this:
As you can see, I indicate the Book Name, Author, Author (Country), Month Read, and so on. Customize your Reading Log however you want, these are just the categories I’m interested in tracking.
I think a Reading Log is helpful because it allows you to see all the books you’ve read in a particular year at a glance. As much as it’s easy to forget what a book is about, it’s also pretty easy to forget the books you’ve already read, especially if you read a lot!
2. Compile your notes!
Remember all the pictures, highlights, and notes you’ve been taking down while you were reading the book? Now it’s time to compile all of them into one accessible database!
I use the application Notion for this because I like its user-friendly and fun interface. Of course, you can easily do this in a notebook or in a simple word document as well. The important thing here is to centralize the quotes, ideas, and thoughts you have about a book all into one place.
This is the section I made on Notion for my book notes:
A book template looks like this:
I got the template from Ali Abdaal and then customized it to fit my preferences. As you can see, it’s filled with prompts to get me thinking about whatever book I’d just read.
Having prompts like these is important because they will guide your thoughts where you want them to go. You won’t always have to start from scratch.
In contrast, if you’re just staring at a blank page, then writing your thoughts down may seem like too much work. But if you only have to fill out a bunch of prompts, then writing down your thoughts suddenly becomes so much easier (and more fun) to do.
Let’s go through the template step by step.
💆♀️ Summary
I try to summarize books in my own words, just to make sure I understand what it’s about. Here’s my summary of My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh:
🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
This prompt encourages you to summarize your overarching thoughts about a book.
I don’t actually write 3 sentences, however, but 3 main points because once I start writing about a certain point, I can’t stop myself from word vomiting all my other thoughts about it. I sometimes even do 4 or 5 bullet points if there’s a lot to unpack from a book.
So yes, the prompt is a bit misleading but 3 sentences is also really good for starters because it’s not an intimidating number yet it still forces you to think about the book and what you felt about it.
Here’s what I wrote for My Year of Rest and Relaxation. I redacted portions because of spoilers:
As you can see, I got carried away and wrote four main points about the book. It’s also not amazingly worded, and that’s okay because the goal is not to write perfect prose but to get all your thoughts written down.
🎨 Impressions
Remember all the notes you wrote on your Notes app while you were reading the book? Put them all under “Impressions,” plus any other specific thoughts you have about the book.
Here are some of my Impressions on My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Again, I redacted some portions because of spoilers:
🤔 Who Should Read It?
Think about who you’ll want to recommend this book to or the kinds of people who might enjoy this book, and why. Not every book will fit every person’s taste, so this prompt will definitely help you make better book recommendations.
You might also be surprised to find that the more you answer this prompt, the more you’ll also figure out your own taste in books!
Here’s my answer for Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:
☘️ How the Book Changed Me
Of course, not every book is going to change you but here’s a prompt just in case.
This prompt encourages you to feel all your feelings and to write down your most personal thoughts about a book. I may make theoretical and abstract observations and have my critique cap on in answering the other prompts. But it gets very personal in this section because you only have to write about the personal significance of a book to you.
Just to demonstrate what this looks like in practice, here are portions of my answer for Americanah:
As you can see, I only write about what I felt about the book and its significance to me. I don’t mind what other people may think about it or its wider impact on literature. It’s just an intimate conversation between me and the book.
✍️ Quotes
I type up all the quotes I’ve taken pictures of or copy-paste all the quotes I’ve highlighted on my Kindle onto the “Quotes” section. I then skim through all the quotes and bold my absolute favorites.
Here are some quotes from My Year of Rest and Relaxation that I’ve decided to store:
Manually typing out these quotes may seem like a lot of work, but I personally don’t mind it because it allows me to read certain quotes again in light of what happens later on in the book, which usually produces new insights for me. But compiling quotes is undeniably easier if you have an E-reader.
🚀 Key Concepts
Lastly, I have this prompt for some of my nonfiction books—those that are particularly dense in concepts like Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber:
I write down the name of the concept and under it, all the definitions and arguments made in the book surrounding that concept.
Other Prompts
Of course, you don’t have to follow my prompts if you don’t like them. These are just my suggestions to get your brain juice flowing!
You can add more or less prompts depending on the kinds of books you read, the kinds of information you want to engage with, and the level of depth you want to think about a book.
I also customize each Book Note depending on what I find fascinating in a book. If I just finished a literary novel, I might have a “What Are Some Interesting Writing Techniques?” prompt like this one from The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner:
For essay collections, I create sub-sections under “Quotes” so that I can attribute which quotes are taken from which particular essay, like this one from Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino:
3. Read book reviews and analyses and integrate them into your notes.
Finally, what do other readers have to say about the book? This is one of the most exciting parts of writing and compiling my notes because it forces me to engage with the wider conversations happening around a book.
I may read some book reviews or analyses online, watch Booktubers review books, or watch author interviews and write down any fascinating points they make in “Additional Sources.”
This is what it looks like for My Year of Rest and Relaxation:
But I may also scatter arguments throughout my notes, especially if they seem to be supporting or contradicting one of the points I’d written:
I know this seems like a lot of work but the more you do it, the more it will feel like routine! Some books only take me 30 minutes to write about, but some books that require a lot of unpacking can take me hours.
Nonetheless, I can’t think of any other way to engage critically with books other than asking yourself questions about them, thinking about them, and hearing what other people have to say about them. I figured my methods are a fun and more efficient way to go about it!
4. Write book reviews.
If you want to take an extra step in engaging with a book, writing book reviews online will help. This is what I’m doing with my blog but you can also write reviews on Goodreads or Storygraph for other people to see!
Concluding Thoughts
These are a lot of extra steps to take rather than simply sitting down and straightforwardly reading a book. But you may find more fulfillment and happiness in doing all this extra work because you’ll be able to understand and appreciate books better.
Of course, make sure that you’re still enjoying yourself writing and compiling all your notes and reading book reviews and analyses. This is all for leisure so if these methods stress you out, it’s okay to not do them! I just figured there may be people who want to learn how to engage with books more critically.
As always, take what you need from this article and leave the rest! Customize everything to suit your preferences, priorities, and lifestyle. Try my methods out yourself, and let me know if any of them have been good for you!
JOIN THE WEEKLY NEWSLETTER!
Get updates on the latest posts and more from Alyanna Denise straight to your inbox. Guaranteed no spams.
By subscribing, you consent to receiving emails.
That’s all for now. Happy reading!
— Alyanna
