Annotating a book for the first time!
As a beginner to annotating, I was very apprehensive about the idea. As I’m working towards my yearly reading goal, I was honestly concerned about how writing, highlighting and tabbing would slow down my reads, choosing to focus on quantity over quality. Sometimes I do struggle with the competitiveness of reading, especially with influencers that can read hundreds of books a year. Obviously, this is not comparative as everyone reads at different paces, and these content creators often read for a living, but even so I feel a need to consume every book as fast as possible.
I wanted to re-read one of my favourite books for awhile now, and I thought that this would be an excellent opportunity to refresh my reading experience and try annotating the book. As I prepared, like all good researchers, I began to watch lots of videos and read some articles about the ‘best ways’ to annotate. I was very concerned about doing it the wrong way, and I wanted to ensure that everything would be perfect - that meant, the right coloured tabs, the best pen, writing really insightful comments and no mistakes. I tried to search and see if someone had annotated the exact same book so that I could use their themes as my own, prioritising how the book would look, and not about how it would make me feel.
Regardless, I did find myself getting very excited to try something new, which I haven’t experienced with reading for awhile now. Don’t get me wrong: I ALWAYS get excited to start a new book, but this was different. It was a new way to absorb the story, especially considering that I have previously read this book before, with a different goal - to change the book, to write in it, and to make it mine. I do have a certain protectiveness over the novel as I read it when I was younger, and so it was very fulfilling to have a copy that was just for me, my thoughts and my feelings.
Also because this was not my first time reading it, I did have some ideas with what themes I wanted to highlight. As the book was ‘The Fault In Our Stars’ by John Green, I decided to highlight themes of romance, morality, emotional/physical pain and character development. Looking back on it now, there were themes that I didn’t use much, such as character development, as I got engrossed with other themes and quotes, but there were also themes that I used a lot more frequently. I found that if I did have a thought and I hadn’t written the theme down, I could write what I felt in the margins of the pages and with time I found that I wasn’t as precious over the book as I was at the start…
Half way through the book I found that I cared more about expressing how I was feeling over certain lines than worried about how it would look. I began to realise that any comments weren’t to be read by anyone else, but for me to process what was happening in the story, and how parts of it I could relate to myself. If I wanted to doodle next to certain quotes, I could. If I wanted to highlight a normal, simple sentence, I could. There was no right or wrong way to annotate the book, only whatever I thought had meaning. The fun is that nobody will write the same things that I will, or highlight the same quotes that I will, because the book was uniquely mine and belonged to me.
Very cheesy… but very true. I started to understand underlying themes of the book that I hadn’t before, all because I connected the dots with certain quotations that I may not have remembered without tabbing the book. If I found something with a similar theme, I could start to see how prominent it was shown with how many tabs there were, and I was able to see if there was any foreshadowing within the first half of the book when I looked back at the highlighted sections.
Overall, it definitely enhanced my reading experience, although I would be careful in future which books I decided to annotate. As much as I enjoyed the experience, I would most likely be saving annotating for re-reads, non-fiction books and other stories from my favourite authors. Personally, I won’t be annotating any fantasy, sci-fi reads as I find these books take me a long time to read anyways, but when I want to slow down and enjoy a book, I think it would be fun to try again.
Please see my next blog for my review of ‘The Fault In Our Stars’ by John Green!
