Textual Encounters of the Worthwhile Kind

Reading without taking notes is as good as not reading at all.

Think of the last text you read — a book, a chapter, an article, a blog post.

What do you remember about it?

What do you remember more clearly:

                    a) The text itself.
                    b) The circumstances in which you read it.
                    c) The feeling of accomplishment that came over you when you finished reading.

I, for one, do not remember the last book I read. (Or the last article, chapter, or blog post.)

Maybe I remember a title, a general topic, an author’s name — sometimes more.
But that one anecdote on such-and-such a page? The footnote with all the citations that seemed so promising? The statement of argument a third of the way through the introduction?

They’re gone. Like they never existed. And like we, therefore, never encountered each other.

Whenever I am reading something that I find to be of significant moment — something compelling, inciting, good — I make a text file on my computer.

In that file, I take notes on whatever strikes me about what I am reading. Beside each note, I write a page number. It ends up looking something like this:

[40]: Crusoe arrives on the island.
[72]: RC can’t believe there’s corn growing.
[75]: Can we consider this an immaculate corn-ception?

Sometimes I type direct quotes from the text. But often I only describe, in a few words, what is being discussed on a given page: analysis of a primary or secondary source, discussion of a concept, definition of a key term.

Later when I need to recall some details about something I’ve read, I’ve got a clear and easily accessible record of my reading.¹

What makes this process distinct, noteworthy, worthy of note? The following precept, which I try as hard as possible to adhere to:

That’s right. No underlining, no highlighting, no notes in the margins.

This is not in the interest of keeping a clean original document, digital or otherwise.

No — it is to prevent me from feeling like some work has been done when, in reality, no work has been done.

Underlining and highlighting feel great. They are easy. They feel like an accomplishment. But once you close a book or pdf, what do you have? Quickly fading memories.

Sure, you have books and pdfs full of marks. But to get to those marks, you’ll have to go back to the books/pdfs themselves — if you can find them.

And then, what do those marks really mean?

You’ll have to read the underlined/highlighted portions of text again in order to understand them.

And then, if you’re like me — and I assume you are — you will wonder half the time why you thought a passage was worth underlining/highlighting in the first place.

Why do a lot of extra work later when you can do a little extra work now?

I know the answer to this question, of course. It’s because you’re the now you, and you don’t care about the later you, and all the work that they may or may not have to do. Let them figure it out.

They’re going to be so mad…