If there is a concept you don’t understand, make a note of it in the margin and look it up later. If you come across an error, mark it in the margin so that you can go back and fix it later. In order to annotate a book, you will need a few supplies. A pen or a pencil is necessary in order to write in the margins of the book. Finally, annotation can simply make reading more enjoyable.

You can have a boring plot and great characters and still have a 5 star read. I might underline some of their quirks, or point out things they do to myself, or write a whole sticky note about them here and there. 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. I never use tabs that show on outside of the books, as I don’t like the way this looks.Irarely took notes on the book – until last year. I found myself scribbling notes in the margins of books such asConversations With FriendsandA Tale For The Time Being.

Like I said, some people are strongly for annotating books, and others are strongly against it. Over the past few years, my feelings on this topic have bounced back and forth a lot. As a child, I wanted to keep my books as pristine as possible. Then about five years ago, I had seen an annotated book and I thought the idea of being able to look back at your thoughts was really cool. I was planning on rereadingThe Fault in Our Stars, so I bought a second copy and wrote down my thoughts in the margins as I went. I enjoyed getting my thoughts down on paper, but looking at how marked up the book was honestly made me a bit anxious, so I decided not to do it again for a while.

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. I will write my theories on sticky notes or in the margins or at the end of chapters. Looking back is always so interesting to see how I responded to the author’s storytelling and whether I thought they did it at a good pace. Basically, for this, I just write down thoughts or questions I have. Usually, this is about character motives – it’s kind of like if I were to bring this book to a discussion, these are the questions I would ask fellow readers.

There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to annotate your books – it’s completely your choice. What i’m reinforcing here is not the fact that everyone should have to annotate books. Before dwelling on the topic of how to annotate a book, let’s look into the benefits of annotating books. Annotating is a great way for Active reading, and it helps avoid passively staring at a Novel. As you read each page, you don’t absorb as much as you would if you Annotate because Annotating opens up a conversation with the text, and you’re able to jot down your thoughts.

You can also jot down short phrases in the margins as they come. Keep a running list of words that you do not know or are not familiar with. Write them down on a separate piece of paper or at the end of the text. Then, look up the terms so you know what they mean. Consider the meaning of the term in the context of where it appears in the book.Keep a dictionary handy so you can look up terms you do not recognize quickly and easily.

I’m a huge fan of cute stationery and I’ll basically need an excuse to use them up. Allows reflection in the future –If you reread the book in the future, you can look back at what you were thinking the last time you read it. You can see whether and by how much your michelle odinet recording thoughts and feelings have changed over time. It makes my book-loving self sad to see so many of my fellow students be turned off of reading because of academic annotation. But hopefully, better annotating strategies will be more widely taught in the future.