Frustrations With Note Taking
In order to write about books, you need to organize your thoughts, but how can you do that when it hinders your ability to focus reading?
If the readers of this blog can not tell, I have these high aspirations of being a sort of book-reviewer and critic of media. This blog was created with that idea in mind but, of course, it has failed to live up to that promise. Not for a lack of trying. When I began reading The Eclipse and Re-emergence of the Communist Movement by Duave and Martin it was for the purpose of writing a review but that fell through as I got frustrated with the note taking process. I thought that I would be able to write a review immediately after finishing while it was fresh in my mind but it was incredibly sparse and lacking in any substantive analysis or critiques. All of this points to a disconnect between my aspirations and my actual capabilities.
When asking around for advice on Twitter for how to best take notes while reading, my followers offered me all sorts of advice. I should highlight in the text and write in the margins or I should put sticky notes with my comments as I read. These won’t work for me. Firstly, I don’t like the idea of marking my physical books because often times I check them out at the library and I wouldn’t be able to and the books that I do own I try to keep in as best condition as I can. Sticky notes would seem to solve this issue but I’ve always disliked sticky notes because I feel they’re wasteful (and they won’t be of much use if I’m reading a text online.) and they don’t offer a good way to archive them. No, if I am to take notes as I read it must be in my notebook. I like my thoughts centralized. My notebook is my diary, task list, and, if I can get the hang of it, home for my study notes. A synthesis of a diary, bullet journal, and commonplace book. Not even to mention that none of these ideas will actually help with my main issue which is reliably being able to write my thoughts without off-railing my reading process.
There is an inherent obstacle when taking notes out of a book and that is that the notetaker is expected to be the teacher and student, to be the one giving and receiving the information. When you’re in a class, note taking is easy. You sit and listen to the professor or lecturer and write down the relevant information. I can do this quite well. When taking notes while reading, you inevitably need to pause and write down whatever information you need. This break in the flow of information results in notetaking being a much longer task which is quite important to me as I like to plan out my day in time blocks. I dedicate thirty minutes a day to reading, I can read about one page a minute so during my sessions I read between 25–30 pages (depending on font size, ease of understanding, etc.) However, when read while taking notes the number of pages I finish is drastically cut by the end of a session. Even when trying to limit my notes to general summaries and comments, I find myself not even being able to finish 12–15 pages by the end of a session. That means a 200 page book would take about a week to complete and given that I have a three book rotation (alternating between fiction, nom-fiction, and political theory) that means 40 or so days would elapse from start to finish. Can you imagine how long Capital would take me! It would be a nightmare.
There is a book written by one of my great-uncles called How to Read Slowly which explains that one shouldn’t worry so much about how much you read during a period of time but should instead focus all your energy on trying to fully get absorbed into reading. That sentiment is nice and I would even agree that it’s the ideal way to read but in my circumstances it just is not in the cards. I’m a full time student in very time-expensive classes due to all the reading and preparation I’m expected to do who does his work-study at night leaving me with about two to three hours a day of pure free time. While I would love to give off the appearance of a beleaguered scholar, I also want to goof around and indulge in other things like TV, going on walks and bike rides, practicing my Spanish, or cleaning my room. Time is a precious thing and given all that’s going on right now I can’t afford to sit in my car and read the works of classics for five hours like my great-uncle could.
Even assuming that time was an issue there is still the concern of what I want to write. The notes I take would ideally be a mix of summary and commentary as I wish to use these notes as the outlines of a review that I can then write to fully flesh out my thoughts on a work. But that can actually be a difficult thing. Notes after each paragraph leads to too much being written down. Notes at the end of a chapter leads to a very surface level grasp. You can try just taking notes when “something important” comes up but often times you overestimate or underestimate the significance of a phrase and it leads to notes of varying quality. After some time and research online, it seems that it’s best to take notes at the end of every page or every two pages.
All this being said, perhaps the solution to my problems is to give up on the idea of taking notes while reading. I mean, I don’t intend to write a review for everything I read. Is anyone begging to see my thoughts on Walden or Capital? More pages have been written about those works than can possibly be read in a lifetime. The more I think about it, the more this aspiration seems impractical. Perhaps my great-uncle was right, maybe its best to just take my time and enjoy the act of reading. My brain can do all the work. If it’s important, I’ll remember it. If not? Oh well.
