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Ask HN: How do you take notes when reading a book?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes when reading a book?

#51
As said in other comments, Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book is great for this.

I'll split it into three parts. First, you want to know what the book is about and whether it's worth reading. Second, your notes should summarize the core of it, so that as soon as you glance your notes, you understand what it's about. Third, and optionally, you want to criticize the book and compare it to similar books on the topic.

Before reading: Outline the book

Find out what kind of book it is - scientific, practical, philosophical, or historical. Some books, like Flow, are usually read by people for practical reasons, but it's philosophical in writing. The difference between scientific and philosophical is that philosophy expects no prerequisite knowledge, whereas scientific is unreadable without knowledge.

If it's a practical book, your notes should be focused around what to do. If it hasn't clearly explained what to do, then it's useless.

Get an overview of the book. Reading reviews or online summaries helps. Intro is great. Simplify it into one line what it really teaches you.

Skim the table of contents. Most books summarize a chapter at the end of each chapter or beginning. Get a feel of the skeleton of the book.

By now, you've skimmed the whole book, congratulations.

If it's a good book, it will tempt you read it in detail. If it's not, don't waste any more time on it. There are lots of books worth reading.

While reading: Terms and propositions

Put aside a section of your notes as a glossary of terms. This is extra useful for scientific books, where a term is often repeated, and philosophy, where different books use the same term to mean different things. Business books can be especially frustrating without defining terms.

Every time you see a new term, write it down in the glossary. You'll know a term is important when several paragraphs and figures are written to define it. The term might act as a pillar, supporting a whole chapter at times.

Next, write down propositions. What is the book trying to explain? A good book will be extremely dense - several propositions in just a few paragraphs. Some bad self-help books might only have one per chapter. The harder books will usually be most information dense and hardest to read, and this identifies them. Read them slowly.

After reading: What's the point of the book?

If you have properly read the book, it should elevate your knowledge to the same level as the author. Now you should criticize the book. If you have nothing to criticize, it either said little, or your understanding is not good enough.

Is the book true?

Check if the book is understood properly and dispute is not contentious. If criticizing, show where the author is uninformed, misinformed, or illogical. Otherwise what she says is not false, but incomplete.

What now? How does this change you? What do you do? If the book is practical, it must be acted upon. Otherwise, it is incorrect. Ask yourself why you don't act upon it.

This last part is actually quite exhausting to do and I recommend you skip it if you're still new or if the book just wasn't that good.

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes when reading a book?

#52

I don't take notes. I find it distracting. I end up absorbing less information. The few times I did try taking notes, I rarely referred back to them, and when I did, found that they weren't very valuable. I've got a good memory, and I'm willing to reread something to absorb more, but notes have never helped me. Not criticizing note-taking; just offering another perspective.

I used to follow this. But I later learned there's a big plateau between where note taking is a burden and where it becomes useful. If you're rereading notes and they weren't valuable, chances are that your note taking skills could use improvement.

It's a bit like touch typing - it takes substantial active effort at first.

Have you ever found yourself looping over a few pages too many times, or that a book is too difficult to digest? Or did you have to move a few chapters ahead to understand an early part of the book? This is where notes are extra useful. This is especially the case for math, science, technical books, or journals.

Some books are not suitable for note taking. Anything where the content can be summarized into powerpoint slides. Self-help or anything that's a best seller are often simplified enough for anyone to read. Story books are designed to be read without notes, and that often include historical and biographical.

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes when reading a book?

#53
Hi!

I write a blog post. How?

I split the book by the headings section (not whole chapter), this is usually one or two pages. Then I try to explain what I understood in my own words. If the author used an example, then I come up with my example.

If the book is about programming, I put code on public GitHub.

After I finish a chapter, I reread my blog posts.

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes when reading a book?

#54

I annotate inside the book. Great if you own the book and really annoying if you don't.

I agree. My solution FWIW is to use a pencil to put a small dot adjacent to the paragraph or sentence of interest and write the number of that page on the back inside cover. It allows other people to read my books without disfiguring them. The books that is.

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes when reading a book?

#55
I use a couple of different Mac apps. First is the Calibre that converts ePub to pdf so I can use the Highlights app for research. That I can then export to DevonThink3 for organizing and writing of ideas. My favorite writing app is Scrivener and usually the last in my workflow.

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes when reading a book?

#56
The idea is to write notes in my own words (https://www.amazon.com/How-Take-Smart-Notes-Nonfiction-ebook...) on roamresearch.com, instead of just highlighting the book/article like I do now.

But I have to say I feel like that is only worth doing if you're reseraching a topic that is important to you. Little value to take notes on the articles we read day to day here in HN and Reddit IMO.

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes when reading a book?

#57

I argue in the margins, as we've done for millennia.

But what if "I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain"?

Write down (page number;note counter) in the margin and then elaborate on one or more pieces of vellum, parchment, paper or bit(s) that you attach with the book, or keep secure.

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes when reading a book?

#58

Underline/circle directly in the book, write notes in the margins, etc. Then when finished reading it, go back through to find all the highlights/notes and write them in a permanent doc. That second phase has really helped my retention. For permanent storage, I almost always use a personal, public blog, just in case someone else could find the notes useful...

Yep I do it in the same way. Mostly if I decide to read a book, I print it out buy the book. Then I use (), [] underline and .x. symbols to make it important and keep reading the book and after each chapter I reread the marked point and scratch off if it feels unimportant after reading the whole chapter amd ghen proceed on.

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes when reading a book?

#59
I think this depends on: why are you taking notes?

Sometimes I'll take notes to help me process and remember things. These can literally be throwaway, as in the piece of paper gets thrown away at the end of the day, or the TextEdit window gets closed without saving. So I focus on the material rather than organization on the page, or even legibility/grammar.

Sometimes I'll be very focused on one thing and whenever I encounter a tangent/sidequest, I'll scribble it down so I can feel comfortable ignoring it until I've finished reading.

Sometimes I'll take notes for my own future reference. Sometimes I'll take notes I'd like to share with other people. Those are different goals and I'll do different things.

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