“OMG monster!! Satan!!!! I bet you dog ear your pages, too!!!”
It’s that time of the day when I take out the book I am reading for summer, and grab a highlighter.
But that’s not normal. And then I realized that a few months back I would never do something like this. It’s something I started recently, it’s new, but throughout my entire life as a bookworm, picking up a highlighter before I start reading is more that extraordinary .
Before you start yelling about the harm I’m doing to my books, take a deep breath and let me explain why I started annotating out of the blue. From the beginning of my reading journey, I was always the person who would get a heart attack every time I saw pages of books that I lend being “dog-eared “. I was afraid of putting my fiction book inside my school backpack because I feared I would damage the cover.
In the majority of my books there are no blemishes and if there are, I promise you I demanded a full-detailed investigation. In a few months, I went from treating a book like something too precious to annotating using highlighters . All of this started during April when I came across a post in the bookish community of Instagram where a girl was showing her fully-annotated edition of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
If you are part of the YA book community around social media , then you know that books are these precious, beautiful story vessels that we must protect with our lives.
They offer us so much, so we have to keep them clean and perfect. Even before I became a part of this online community, I was as paranoid about my books as now .But after I joined the book-blogging community, a lot of my reading habits changed.
First, I started buying way more books than I could read, because it was what everyone else was doing.
Now I have a TBR so big that it could be compared to the Eiffel Tower, but that’s a post for another day. I never wanted a pen or pencil to touch the pages, I didn’t want my paperbacks to bend, I didn’t want anything to get on the flawless hardcovers.
But let’s go back to annotating!
On one hand, highlighting and writing in the margins is a great way to interact with the text and leave a physical reminder of how a book made you feel at some point in your life. However, it’s hard to get over the mental block of writing in books. They can be expensive and it’s hard not to overthink what’s worth writing down. The question for most book -nerds is : how to annotate a book so your marks are done effectively?
Annotation is the process of adding your own thoughts or insights into a book or text.
If you want to re-read a book, it’s always interesting to see what parts of a story were meaningful at a point in your life. It’s a snapshot of the person you are.
HOW TO ANNOTATE A BOOK
There are five different ways you can annotate.
- Sticky Notes
- Hilighters
- A good,thin pencil or pen.
- A key and symbols .
- Annotate with the student way.
STICKY NOTES
One of the lowest-pressure ways to annotate your book is by using sticky-notes and tabs. A lot of readers have fears about marking up their books and are very protective of them, so if you’re worried about making a mistake with your highlighting or writing, sticky notes are the best option. I recommend using the small plastic ones because they look the nicest and also aren’t too thick.
However, you will have to remember to carry around your pack of tabs wherever you carry your book. It will also help if you choose to color-code your tabs so they match your favorite quotes , scenes you love and words you don’t know and need the definitions .
HIGHLIGHTERS
Moving from sticky notes to highlighters – which seem scary for the majority of readers. The worst thing is when you have one that’s too thick and you can’t draw with it properly and you highlight too much of the passage or highlight it in a lazy manner. It’s also important to be confident about what you want to highlight, because if you take too long, the color will seep through to the other side. So be careful with the highlighter you’re using!
A GOOD THIN PEN OR PENCIL
A good pen is a must-have for anyone annotating a book. While some people feel completely uncomfortable with writing in their books because they’re scared it’ll look messy or they’ll make a mistake that they can’t erase, there’s nothing better than writing your thoughts to the side of the page. Some people prefer using a pencil, including me.
But finding the right pen for this job can be tricky. The only pens I feel comfortable using are the ones that have extremely thin or small ballpoint tops. An advise from me is to refuse using liquid pens, like fine liners, because they bleed through the pages. Also it’s good to avoid writing close to the middle where the pages can get messy because your writing may become sloppy due to the fact that there isn’t enough room for a ton of words.
A KEY AND SYMBOLS
Similar to using color-coded tabs, symbol-based annotation is a simple way to interact with your book. Try to figure a personal book annotation key for yourself and assign symbols for favorite quotes (underline), confusing phrases (question mark) , etc !
ANNOTATE WITH THE STUDENT WAY
Lastly, here are some easy practices to annotate like a student:
- Underline main ideas or claims the author is making .What do you want to remember when you flip through it again?
- Circle words you don’t know and then define them in the margin.
- Put stars next to anything that gives you pause.
- If you’d like, write notes on what the text made you feel emotionally or question.
In the end , annotating books can be quite scary, especially for those who haven’t marked-up their books before. The important thing to remember is to be confident and do what you like with it.
To me, annotating is a physical mark of love on a book and it shows just how much it means to you. I believe annotating is really fun and it feels like your actively participating in the reading experience rather than just passing through the pages. But at last everyone annotates differently, and that’s just my way of doing it!
Xoxo,
Miss Reader
P.S Don't forget to follow me on my bookstagram page !
