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How I take Literature Notes in Capacities

How to learn from your books and still love reading

Réka
9 min readOct 20, 2023

The first thing I do when I get a new book is break the spine. I can almost see you wince, but let me explain. I love a well-loved book. A book that has been carried around, pored over, written in. A book that has been cherished by someone. I love borrowing books from my friends that have little notes written in the margins because it feels like a whispered conversation between my friend, the book, and me. A book is not a sacred object. Also, I want to be able to bend the front cover back around and read the book one-handed. Hence the spine-snapping.

Reading is my favourite thing to do, and I read a lot of books. This worked out well for me during my literature degree; sitting around all day in my university library with a cup of earl grey and a mountain of books stacked on the floor at my feet was my idea of perfection.

Which is why it’s insane to me that I never thought to do anything with the information I read until recently. Yes, at university I used my reading to write essays, but the information never went further than that. I took some reading notes (which looked more like sparse marginalia and loose PostIt notes that got lost at the bottom of my bag) and went about my degree. I loved it, don’t get me wrong. But there was so much more I could have done.

The problem: reading and forgetting

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Réka
Réka

Written by Réka

writer and recovering perfectionist

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