/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20236005]

How do you take notes while reading fiction?

[Anonymous No.20236067]

what is there to take note of?

[Anonymous No.20236075]

>>20236005
bro but what if we highlight every sentence in the book and then cancel it out and pretend like the whole book had already been highlighted for us

[Anonymous No.20236086]

>>20236005
I don't read fiction because I'm not a retard.

[Anonymous No.20236095]

>must externally record all thoughts!
Notetaking is for "people" without an internal monologue.

[Anonymous No.20236108]

>>20236005
I never cover the page like that but if there's something I wanna note down for a re-read I'll jot it down in small handwriting in the margins around the text

[Anonymous No.20236113]

>>20236067

If it's a good book, then plenty.

[Anonymous No.20236139]

>>20236113
such as?

[Anonymous No.20236433]

>>20236095
It doesn't always have to be thoughts.

[Anonymous No.20236555]

>>20236095
This. When I first started reading philosophy I would underline important lines because I thought that was what you are supposed to do with philosophy since it is "super serious writing" or something. But it didn't do anything for me other than waste time that I could be using to read farther into the book. I had taken the midwit bait. You don't have to do anything special when you read complicated stuff, other than maybe reading a little slower. If you have good reading comprehension, then you will comprehend what you read lol.

[Anonymous No.20236594]

>>20236555
Midwit who thinks he's cleverer than he is detected. I forgive you for your trips alone.

Really though, take notes faggot.

[Anonymous No.20236609]

I summarise what I read, I hate reading something and forgetting it, which always happens. Here is some of my summary, the first two chapters, of Glorious Nemesis, a book I had forgotten until I just reread the notes (I did not enjoy this book).

1. 28 year old Sider arrives in Cortona and is overwhelmed. Something about this place speaks to him. He has strange, otherwordly sensations and magical dreams. Underneath it all he suspects there may be something terrible. He leaves, and feels terrible, and so returns to live in Cortona one year later

2. He returns but the ecstasy he felt before does not return. His disappointment at this, he feels, is disproportionate. The weather is grim. A tall mountain, Stag's Head, and a black cottage at its foot give him 'mystical dread'. He dreams of a woman who gives him a powerful mind and soul, and has one vivid dream of her on the mountain. He decides to leave the town for good, and goes for a walk in the forest at the foot of the mountain when he meets two women, one in red who evokes the imager of Her from the dream, and one in blue. He brushes the woman in blue and almost collapses, and then walks on. The blue woman seemed to be Her. He hopes he sees them again. He searches the town. He sees them again at a dance and they stare at each other. The townsfolk huddle in corners and stare at them too. The woman in blue disappears into the forest. He learns the red woman stayed at a hotel in town but disappeared. He receives a telegram saying his fortune is at risk. But he sees the women going up the mountain and follows them, though they move supernaturally fast. The red one runs down the mountain, he goes to the top to find the blue one but the red one is calling him back but he ignores her, he chases blue. He must leap to follow her, she appears ahead and calls him a coward, he retreats.

[Anonymous No.20236617]

>>20236609
Other times the notes get to be a but too much. Here is some of my summary of Autobiography by John Cowper Powys. This is only like the first 20 pages of a 700 page book, but there is so much mentioned on every page, and it lacks any real structure, so I do not know how else I would capture it.

Derbyshire, the boss of the shield, and Dovedale; the Tremendum Mysterium of Mount Cloud; moving tadpoles from pond to puddle; his father the Vicar of Shirley and 'that axe of laurel' he made for him; his father's thick soles; hanging his brother Littleton and being afraid of 'having gone too far in a life-and-death game'; Self-analysis--desire to enjoy the Cosmos, a desire to appease his conscience, a desire to play the part of Magician, a desire to play the part of the Helper, and a desire to satisfy his Viciousness; SADISM; has to skip passages in books that give him the sadistic thrill; modern books are from the devil; FEW GREAT WRITERS have the sadistic chord in their literature; normal sex pleasure banishes the sadistic desire; sadistic fantasies and their danger, thoughts becoming ENTITIES; black magic piss cauldron; his father's elder brother, Littleton, visits, and they think him strong because he was in the army, and John enjoys being allowed to punch him in the face to test his toughness; two crumbs, one big one small, like him and his brother, he learns relativity; fear of police sparked by a remark by an old woman who told him to watch out for the police because he had thrown a dead branch into the river; the art of forgetting (to soothe fear); his deep love for his brother Littleton; the mysterious ripple in the pond believed to be an ancient fish;

[Anonymous No.20236649]

>>20236617
My notes started off like this, where I would focus less on summarising and more on talking about certain points. I was also including quotes from the books.

[Anonymous No.20236653]

>>20236649
forgot, pic related, notes.

[Anonymous No.20236655]

>>20236005
what kind of troglodyte does this?

[Anonymous No.20236667]

>>20236653
Then it became more just summarising. Sometimes I put my thoughts under the summaries. This one time I also notes the motifs and recurring imagery separately as it was used so strongly.

I really just want to be able to remember things better. I hate forgetting, especially longer books that can take some time to read. You think about them years later and can barely remember them.

[Anonymous No.20236668]

i read for pleasure
if there is something worth remembering, i will not forget it

[Anonymous No.20236787]

>>20236139
If you really love a book to the point of writing notes on it you could jot down initial analysis of symbolism and themes to recall later if you choose to write an essay about the book or something idk

[Anonymous No.20236812]

I use memory techniques to recall what I've read. Look into lull and Bruno

[Anonymous No.20236850]

>>20236812
what exactly can you remember? I assume you are using mnemonics. So, what you are remembering? Broad plot lines? Scenes? Whole sentences?

I find it hard to believe mnemonics are useful to remembering a book. A book is, in itself, a story, and mnemonics are a type of story themselves.

[Anonymous No.20236863]

>>20236005
I have a journal in which I’ll jot down brief summary notes, lines with prose I especially liked, and new words. Usually I do this at the end of each chapter but it if it’s something like Vonnegut I often break them up

[Anonymous No.20236891]

>>20236005
We used to do chapter summaries in school, do something like that maybe? Lately I just write whatever a passage "makes me feel" though so I remember why I bothered to take a note.

[Anonymous No.20236894]

I never took note taking seriously until I came across the notebooks of professional writers and saw how filled to the brim and interesting they were. These people had a natural compulsion to collect and document things in books they found interesting. I wonder if it was a skill that used to be taught from Bible studies or if people independently developed the skill.

[Anonymous No.20236907]

>>20236894
I think it’s an extension of the formal curriculum that authors either take advantage of or arrive at on their own if their lives were previously deprived of it. Taking notes like that is analogous to a musician’s transcribing pieces or an artist sketching out a work with complex, multipoint perspective

[Anonymous No.20236912]

>>20236894
where can i see an example of what you mention?

[Anonymous No.20236928]

>>20236667
What program is this?

[Anonymous No.20236940]

>>20236912
Look up John Milton's commonplace book.

[Anonymous No.20236971]

>>20236928
Standard Notes. I use it for a diary and notes and stuff. I like it because it syncs between laptop and phone, it's free, it's encrypted, and I can back it up to .txt files.

>>20236940
Interesting, thanks.

[Anonymous No.20238017]

>>20236555
>if you're good at something then you'll be good at it
suppose someone wanted to be better anon

[Anonymous No.20239454]

I put a little blank sticky note next to the line that stood out to me. If it was worth remembering seeing it will be enough for me to recall why I put the note there.

[Anonymous No.20239482]

>>20236005
Take the personal-knowledge management pill. The software is called ObsidianMD

[Anonymous No.20239492]

>>20236653
>>20236667
Retarded. That's gotta slow down the reading process quite a bit.

[Anonymous No.20239505]

>>20236005
I take notes in a separate notebook and organize it by color. So it's mostly divided into passages I liked, my own thoughts or passages inspired by a book, words to look up, and authors or artists to look into. The only downside to my method is that my alcoholism meakes it harder to read my old notes and I can't write as neat anymore because of the shakes.

[Anonymous No.20239571]

>>20236005
i use a pencil because anything else can bleed through

shame I love fountain pens

[Anonymous No.20239908]

>>20236850
>what exactly can you remember?
whatever i want.

[Anonymous No.20240972]

>>20236005
I take a photo of every blurb that I might find interesting and send it to a random person on discord, whatsapp or viber.

[Anonymous No.20241137]

>>20236940
Is there a transcript somewhere? I can't find any actual instances apart from commentary on it. Where did you find it?

[Anonymous No.20241174]

>>20236139
dude, stop peppering me with questions and let me pretend my paperbacks have important aesops

[Anonymous No.20241219]

>>20239908
I don't believe you. Very few people in the world use mnemonics to memorise entire books, word for word, and the effort it takes to do that is no small thing. So, no, you don't remember whatever you want. You remember some specific thing that for some annoying reason you will not or can not put into words.

[Anonymous No.20241229]

>>20236005
Just get a notebook and write whatever you want on it. I just write down my own reflexions and interesting new concepts I want to remember or keep thinking about in the future

[Anonymous No.20241244]

>>20236005
>notetaking
anyone else here just talk to themselves out loud about the book/themes/what's going on and questions they have?

[Anonymous No.20241520]

>>20241244
Yes, and that definitely helps to remember something. I don't do it for every page, or even every chapter though, just when something seems interesting to me I tend to start pretending I am explaining it, or discussing it, with someone else. I remember it much better after that.

[Anonymous No.20241557]

>>20241520
yep particularly the part around pretending to explain or converse with someone on a part

[Anonymous No.20241771]

I have noticed that for some reason I cringe so hard when I write down my own comments or thoughts.

[Anonymous No.20241782]

>>20241244
>>20241520
You know you can talk inside your head too.

[Anonymous No.20241783]

>>20241782
feels more authentic doing it out loud. emulates a real life discussion

[Anonymous No.20242840]

>>20241782
>>20241783
Yes, it's much better to do it out loud. You get more involved in it, and I think being active is the main point that helps to make it stick in the mind, because then it is like you are using the knowledge.

[Anonymous No.20244038]

I don't really take notes anymore, partly because I can't be bothered having a pencil with me and whipping it out every other page. And partly because I don't see the point if you're not actively studying the book you're reading, because honestly how many times have you gone back and read the notes you've taken.

[Anonymous No.20245028]

>>20241219
if you can memorize a poem you can memorize a book. just takes longer. people memorized the iliad. in fact, the story was sung using mnemonic tricks

[Anonymous No.20245818]

I usually just sticky tab paragraphs I enjoy
>>20241520
I do this as well

[Anonymous No.20245841]

>>20236005
Pic related is a bit much for The Shining, but in a serious book I use asterisks and daggers footnotes for everything.

[Anonymous No.20245883]

>>20236005
If a scene strikes you, highlight/note any and all elements in it and their possible connections. I just finished reading the scene in Fathers and Sons when Nikolai is sitting in his Arbour reflecting on a conversation that happened between Bazarov and Pavel which essentially boiled down to the old Russian romanticism versus the new, modern nihilism. Nikolai muses that he fears the nihilists may be closer to the truth, yet he also remarks on the absolute beauty of the falling night around him. He then goes on to reminisce about his deceased wife, who symbolizes a romanticized past while contrasting that with his current (modern) relationship with Fenichka, the daughter of his housekeeper and mother of his young child. To reiterate, when you come across a scene in fiction which really strikes you, it's usually because there are profound elements that require further examinations and simply the act of writing out the primary features of a scene and their possible implications can help to appreciate the scene to an even deeper level and can also serve to help capture what you felt while reading it, thus making it easy to return to the scene and recapture that feeling without having to re-read the scene in it's entirety

[Anonymous No.20245903]

>>20245028
I think this is close to how it was performed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI0mkt6Z3I0

It's bears striking resemblance to how the Indian vedas were/are orally transmitted. Of course that's probably partly because that video was made by an Indian, but I think this method of oral transmission must come from the common indo-european ancestors, just like practices like the animal sacrifices and offering to the Gods before meals

[Anonymous No.20246114]

>>20236005

The same way you take notes while reading anything: preparing a computer file, optionally formatting it around the main strcture of a work (its chapters, say) and then doing the main beats that you recognize every so often, say a clause for every ten pages or so unless one thing captures your attention.

[Anonymous No.20246157]

>>20245841

Hm, I didn't even realize that the OP was The Shining, neat.

I got a first edition of The Shining and I did an abortive first attempt at a close read, and this is as far as I got. At some point, I'll take it up again. I don't care too much about the book itself as literature but what I'm interested in are the details of adaptation. The bit I read isn't TERRIBLE, he humanizes his characters reasonably well, but it's conventional Boomer prose.

[Anonymous No.20246173]

Hm, I didn't even realize that the OP was The Shining, neat.

I got a first edition of The Shining and I did an abortive first attempt at a close read, and this is as far as I got. At some point, I'll take it up again. I don't care too much about the book itself as literature but what I'm interested in are the details of adaptation. The bit I read isn't TERRIBLE, he humanizes his characters reasonably well, but it's conventional Boomer prose.

[Anonymous No.20247674]

Write the page number down and go back to re-read the section and write down my thoughts in a google doc later, don't want to interrupt the flow of reading. The idea has the chance of getting lost this way but if the words can't re-spark it it probably wasn't that great of one anyways