Hi dear friends! As I mentioned in my June Wrap Up, I’m really trying to dial it back with reading as many books this month, and instead, focus more on my annotation projects that I started at the beginning of the year and lost traction for. It’s also been a while since my last “how I annotate” post, and I wanted to update y’all on that as well! Grab a fun beverage, and get cozy!
I still use the same supplies as I used to, but my annotation strategies have changed a little bit:
- Sticky tabs: This is where I go a little wild; I usually have a tab for each of the main characters, any dynamics I want to track, and then important themes or motifs in the book. If there’s anything relating to whatever I’m tracking in the text, there’ll be a sticky tab next to it.
- Highlighting: I try to use colors that correspond to my tabs — so if anything in pink is related to “love”, I’ll highlight any important quotes in pink. I try really hard not to have my annotations look like that one photo of Alexis Rose highlighting her textbook, so things I highlight are either usually very important, or ones that I really love.
- Underlining: I tend to underline anything that stands out to me or things that I want to put an emphasis on, but isn’t as important as a highlighted quote.
- Brackets: These are usually for longer quotes — the importance may vary; sometimes I just don’t want to highlight or underline an entire paragraph.
- If I’m ever highlighting and underlining, it means that that’s really important to me!
- Sticky notes: I try to keep whatever I can in the margins, mostly because I don’t always have sticky notes on me when I read, and because sticky notes can fall out (which is why I like to tape them down with washi tape) but if it’s something I can see myself going back to, or if I have a lot to say on a particular subject, I’ll write it down in a sticky note!
In terms of my current annotation projects:
- I started my reread of Les Misérables by Victor Hugo a few months ago, but only made it past the Introduction before I got buried in ARCs and overwhelmed. I’d really, really like to make significant progress on it this year. Ideally, I’d like to have finished my reread by December 31st, but I’m trying not to place too much pressure on myself! Here’s what I’m tabbing for:
- I’m also currently rereading The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern! I’m double annotating this one — I’m annotating this one for a friend, while also annotating a copy for myself, so there’s a copy that’s filled with some more jokes for her, and then one that’s just my thoughts and notes for me!
- I’m hoping to read and annotate Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor soon too; I started back in January, and got about four chapters in, and then was fantasy’ed out! This is another one that I’m hoping to finish before the year’s over.
