Taking Notes About Books

One of the most common types of notes I have, after my journal notes, are notes about books I've read.

As an avid reader (100+ books per year), I had to learn how to take notes or I wouldn’t remember much. For a long time, I didn’t have a process — I read 200–300 books after graduation without taking any notes.

Here’s my current process.

Reading

• Most of my reading is digital.
• Benefits: easier to carry, easier to extract information.
• Workflow:
  • Skim the book first.
  • Reset progress to “not read” before starting (to avoid skewed progress tracking).

Process Skeleton

I usually create two notes per book:

1. Pristine note (highlights)

   • Automatically generated from Kindle highlights (or exported manually).
   • Contains only data from the book, no personal comments.
   • Serves as the parent note.

2. Annotations note (comments & thoughts)

   • Manually created.
   • Contains my reflections, questions, and learnings.
   • Links back to the pristine note.
   • Derived notes (children, friends, opposing notes) branch out from here.

Creating Each Note

• Pristine note:
  • Generated automatically (Kindle Highlights Plugin or Book Search Plugin).
  • If manual, I use book template.
  • I don’t edit this note manually — if needed, I regenerate it.
• Annotations note:
  • Created manually with Template - Generic.
  • Contains metadata + free-form commentary.
  • If no highlights exist, I still generate a pristine note (for consistency and automation).

Processing by Book Type

1. Amusement Books

• Examples: fiction, drama, detective stories, magazines.
• Usually no notes.
• Occasionally a highlight if a phrase stands out.

2. Philosophy, Parenthood, Self-Help

• Always have highlights.
• Sometimes annotations (e.g., linking parenthood insights to my kids’ situations).
• Philosophy books often become hubs for personal improvement.

3. Technical and Management Books

• Always have both highlights and annotations.
• Notes often become parents/friends of derived notes.
• Practical learnings applied to daily life.

Plugins

• Kindle Highlights Plugin — main source of pristine notes.
• Book Search Plugin — for books not read on Kindle.
• Other plugins: process exported HTML from sideloaded or non-Kindle books.

Using the Data — Visualization

• Books sorted by:
  1. Number of highlights (descending).
  2. Last updated date (descending).
• Assumption: more highlights = more influence (not always true, but a useful heuristic).
• Visualization: DV_Livros — card view of my library.
  • Rarely used, but nice for overview or sharing.

Key Takeaways

• Two-note system: pristine (data) + annotations (thoughts).
• Automation ensures consistency and reduces manual work.
• Different book types → different levels of processing.
• Visualization adds perspective, even if rarely used.