#Ways to annotate how to#

The basics of annotation can be done with literally any writing instrument in any color you can get your hands on. A writing utensil (pen, pencil, crayon, whatever you want).What Supplies do you Need to Annotate a Book? Annotating books has opened my eyes and made me see things in my daily life I normally would have brushed past. But it also makes you more observent in your every day life as well.

That’s why you remember the plot and characters better.

Makes You More Observent: When you are annotating books for fun, you have to pay more attention to the words you are reading.

For example, one of my favorite methods of annotation is adding doodles and images to a block of text. The end result is just so pretty, you know what I mean? So obviously I love having fun with it when I am highliting lines and adding my thoughts to the margins of my favorite chapters.

It’s Fun and Creative: The first thing that attracted me to annotating books was the creative/aesthetic aspect of it.

I look at what I liked and what I didn’t like in a book and try to figure out what the author did to achieve it. So, one of the steps toward that goal is taking a deeper look at the books I am reading.

Becoming a Better Writer: If you didn’t know, one of my goals is to become a published author.

However, when I annotate books for fun, I tend to remember a lot more about them because I am being more analytical with them.

Actually Remembering the Plot of the Book: Am I the only one who reads a book and then completely forgets the entire plot and cast of characters as soon as I close the last page? Because I don’t remember nearly as much as I should.

One option is not better than the other.īUT, if you are looking for some reasons why you should, here are a few benefits of annotating books: You can choose to annotate every book you read or you can choose to never touch a sticky note and highlighter in your life. There is no right or wrong reason for annotating books for fun. I was just lazy and didn’t like doing things that felt unnecessary.īut like I said, the further away from school, the more I have started to fall in love with the art of annotation, especially for the books I read for fun. But looking back, it was a good skill they were trying to teach. I would highlight random sentences and rephrase things without actually taking any of the information in. You can probably remember being given paragraphs or pieces of text and being forced to annotate them in middle school and high school. The definition of annotating a book is reading and analyzing a piece of text, and then adding the thoughts, feelings, and ideas that pop into your head directly into the text. I make a commission through these links with no impact on your purchase. In this post, I am going to talk about the art and joy of annotating books in detail, along with all the supplies I keep in my annotation kit.ĭisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. It has become such a relaxing and creative pastime. I was immediately addicted to annotating books for fun. Rereading my favorite book and adding my thoughts and emotions throughout was such a special experience.

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. 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. The first book I decided to annotate was about one year ago, and it was The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

#Ways to annotate how to#

They go into so much detail, please go check out their post! I also love this post from Mollie Reads! They give so many examples of how to annotate books for fun!Īfter all my research, and once I got the hang of it through photos and videos, I decided to try it for myself. I also love reading other bloggers’ takes on annotating! Here is a fantastic post from The Wordy Habitat all about annotating. “How I Annotate Books” with Pages of Hayley