Hello friends welcome back to my channel! Today I am filming my how I annotate my
books video by popular request and by that I mean like two people but I'm gonna
film it anyway. Just so you know, if you're looking for
like a super organized like color-coded all that kind of jazz system, this is not
for you. This is for my fellow lazy people, people who like want to put their
notes in but also like are too lazy for an actual color-coded system. I do have
some sort of color coding sometimes but not always. It's a little chaotic, it
really just depends on my mood but I'm just gonna like walk you through it - what
I do. My annotation story kind of started in high school and one of my favorite
books to go back to is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. This is the
copy that I had read before school and then also during school I started
annotating during school and I loved it so much more and back then I was super
OCD like I don't know if you can tell I'll try to include like I'll insert
clips of like a proper flip through but it is like fully color-coded, let me see
if I can find a good page, it's like highlighter color coded and pen color
coded. I couldn't tell you for the life of me with any of these colors mean
because I didn't put a legend in and I did have some tabs just to mark I'm
pretty sure these were to mark like where we had to read to in school but
yeah. I am more partial to writing and highlighting than I am to tabbing
personally. I know that's pretty much opposite to what most people do on
booktube but yeah the reason - I guess I should have explained this but the
reason why I annotate is because I like going back through and seeing what I
thought at the time, any kind of theories I had, and that's what I like most about
it and I know people who like color-code their tabs can do that like at a
glance, I'm just not coordinated enough? and
smart enough for that, so I don't do that. But I yeah I just wanted to walk through
kind of my system. But yeah so what I what I like to do is...
at the very base level, this is like level one, if I'm super lazy
I have no- nothing with me except for a pencil, this is what I do. And I know I
have two tabs in this but this was Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and what I
will do is literally I will just do some basic underlining and writing notes and
that's literally it this is like the super lazy person way
of doing anything. Sometimes I'll put tabs on like super important moments if
I do this method but typically speaking I can just annotate with just a pencil
and that is it. And on that note I'm going to run into
the tools I actually use if I'm going full-blown annotation. As I mentioned, I
do use a pencil to do all my writing with. This is a mechanical pencil, I've
had this since I was five. But yeah, I use a mechanical pencil
I actually prefer a like an actual pencil however I find that with smaller
books like because I read a lot of mass-market paperbacks and this works
better because it's a finer tip and also then I don't have to carry around a
sharpener and then also with that obviously in my pencil case
I do have lead fillings as well. In case you're wondering what pencil case I use
I have this like old thing that has like three pockets...yeah I'm not fussy about
that either. In terms of highlighters, this I'm actually like fairly particular
on. I don't - my one, number one thing is I don't like when the pen or highlighter
or whatever bleeds through to the next page and you can see it which is why I
use pencil even though obviously pen is a nicer writing experience but in terms of
highlighters this is what I use. I have these like gel highlighters. I don't know
if anyone's heard of these before but basically it's like a crayon and you
twist it up and it's a highlighter yeah if you are religious you will know this
is what they use in Bible study because Bibles have the thinnest pages no
to mankind so if you just search up either gel highlighters or like Bible
highlighters you will find these. I really like them, the only trade-off is
and when I - I'll insert a clip at some point of - I'll flip through the Fifth Season
because that's my most well annotated book right now but you'll see the... it's
not as solid like it does look like a crayon, it looks like a highlighter
crayon basically so if that bothers you you might not like these but if that
doesn't bother you then you might like these and it's also not a consistent
width because yeah because you know if you're using a different side of the
crayon whatever you know what I mean, you know what I mean
in terms of colors I know I have a lot of colors here but that's just cuz the
pack had a lot of colors. I don't color code. I basically - when I start a
book I pick a color and I stick with it throughout because I'm crazy or like a
little weird I do I do like to like match it to the cover so for the Fifth Season I
did go with the green to start off with and Obelisk Gate, I did go with pink so
that's like the only like, color matching thing I'll do but yet inside
the book I just pick one color and I run with it. And then in terms of sticky
notes, any tabs, as you can see with the Fifth Season here I do have these tabs in
the side. I don't tab every moment that I highlight or underline, I only tab like
the super super important things and also mainly the things where I want to
write a little bit more because what I do is I use these post-it notes. I have
these like little ones I think these are like one inch by one and a half inch and
I really like these because they are small enough to serve as tabs as well
but they're big enough that I can write like a little bit of text on there so
that's mainly what I use it for, it's like when I have like a thought or a
thought that I will definitely want to go back to now that I like am reviewing
them on my channel, sometimes I'll tab - I'll like consciously tab the moments that I
want to touch on in my reviews so that's what I do
you'll see, I dunno if you can tell - and again I will do a
proper flip through at some point - so like I'll have like a note with the
sticky, I'll just pop it on top. I know it bothers some people that like it goes
over the text and you can't read it but that doesn't bother me too much I can
just lift it up if I need to yeah that's kind of my system in a
nutshell I know it's not the most sophisticated not most advanced - Oh in terms,
sorry sorry sorry - in terms of color coding typically speaking I wouldn't
color code it's just literally and I would literally just put whatever I'll
just like pick a color for the book kind of thing however for the Fifth Season
when I first started it I started noticing there were like definite themes
obviously if you watched my Fifth Season review you'll know that I mentioned
like feminist themes and then racism as well and then so that's kind of - were
kind of like a big two themes and environmentalism so yeah because I have
three colored tabs I kind of did separate it so Green is environmental or-
and/or just like regular plot points so that's my default, the green, just because
I wanted to - I think I wanted to like match my highlighter I don't know
orange is for racism and then pink is for kind of like the sexuality, LGBT,
feminism, everything else kind of moments so it's not really a color-coded system
the only one that's actually like color-coded is the orange and and not
every moment is tabbed as well like there are definitely moments especially
I definitely highlighted more in the Obelisk Gate than I have in
Fifth Season but yet you can see there are some moments that I've highlighted and
I've written notes but I don't have a tab on this page per se, I just like... this
is a terrible video I realize this. I don't have like a rhyme or reason as to
like what I decide to highlight what I decide to like tab but again it's just
like the tabs are mostly things that I will want to come back to the most or
what I want to come back to in my review. Also I do use a bookmark when I
underline in pencil- with my pencil I will use it like
as a ruler and just like yeah and do it that way instead of carrying around a
ruler with me which I have found helpful it just saves space but you know if you
want to use a ruler that works too um so that is it for my little system
hopefully it was somewhat helpful. Basically all we learned today is that I
am super lazy and my- and chaotic and yeah yeah I did just want to kind of put
this out there because I know a lot of the videos here on booktube are kind of
like super organized and super you know color-coded and everything and I just
wanted to let anyone out there who is a little lazier and who does not have the
capacity to color code to that extent know that you can do it with much less
you can annotate and still have that same relationship with your book even
without all the like tabs and colors and tools yeah I think all of my - my
highlighters cost the most money and it's because I specifically want those
like gel highlighters which are a little pricier I would say but but like like I
said like for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, I just grabbed a pencil and annotated with a
pencil so you can literally do it with just a pencil or a pen. So anyone can
annotate, I encourage you to try it. I find that it really helps me retain
information. Something I'll do at the beginning of the book that helps me and
this is kind of like incorporating my like studying habits but at the - for the
first few chapters when they're introducing characters and like place
names and stuff I will actually like just highlight character names so that I
can go back and like see - see who they are. I just find it really helpful as
well when you're like writing in the margins and writing your own notes just
to kind of process your own feelings, write down kind of like your theories,
what you think it's gonna happen next. I will also write like really casual notes
like fuck this shit or like what the fuck like that's kind of like that's
kind of notes that I put in as well so um it's really it's really all yours and
you can make it what you want and yeah I hope this was helpful for someone at
least totally understand if it's not because it is basically just use your
gut, use your instinct, and that's, that's really what it is. If you're nervous
about writing in your books... try it with a secondhand book? I.. yeah I feel like you
get over it pretty quickly like I used to be very like oh I can't write my
books but as soon as I started doing it I like fell in love with it and I don't
really have a problem with it anymore the only thing to keep in mind
is that obviously you can't sell a book that you've written in really, so that's
that's the only thing and that's the only pro to like the pure tabbing
color-coded system um but yeah again was this the annotation video you asked for?
Probably not, but it's the one you're getting so yeah thank you guys so much for watching
as always if you like this video give it a thumbs up and comment down below
how you annotate. I would love to see if you guys do similar things as me or if
you are completely different let me know I'd love to hear. So yeah, thank you so
much and I will see you guys next time!