Discussion // How I Annotate My Books

Occasionally I posted a photo of my books on my insta story in my personal Instagram account and the one day, I received a DM-ed from a few friends in my personal Instagram account asked me, 'what are the sticky notes for? and why do you tab in a novel you read?'. I told them that is for something important and/or quotes that I like and it helps me to review the books. That makes me decided to share with you on 'How I Annotate My Books'.

Before I start, let me share with you the meaning of Annotate.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, Annotate means to add a short explanation or opinion to a text or drawing.

Truthfully, I never annotate my novel before. Well, that is because I don't feel like I need to tab anything until I read A Court of Thorn and Roses by Sarah J. Maas. There are a lot of words that are so new to me and I need to jot down the meaning of those words and then I found things that I love in the books that I need to put the tabs on but before this, I have never use any sticky notes instead I write it down on my notebook which is kind of complicated to do so as you have to write the page number which lines it is. It's kind of annoying because I don't remember which is which. So, I stop doing that and went to the bookstore to find stationery that will help me annotate my books. Here are the stationeries that I use to annotate my books.

☄ 5 colors of sticky notes with post-it notes

☄ 4 colors of Post-it notes (I have run out of the pink one)

☄ 7 colors of Toy Story Sticky Notes that I bought from Daiso (but I only use 6 colors)

☄ Blue and Black Pens that won't bleed when I write on my Post-It notes

These are all important stationery that I use. I love them all. It sticks well on the book and does not have any residue when I want to change the place of that sticky notes.

At first, I just simply tab the pages using all the colors without any means. Meaning there is no system. Let's say, I want to share the quotes that I like from the books but I have no idea where it was and which pages it is. That once again makes me annoyed with myself. Lol

After some time looking for ways to annotate books I finally found the right way of using my sticky notes and yes, I found the best way to organize all the colors and what every color is for. That makes me happy. I have been referring a lot from many readers, Booktubers. I couldn't say enough how thankful I am to them for sharing how they annotate their books. Thank you so much, guys! ❤ 

Anyway here's how I use the sticky notes;

I'm using two different sticky notes for different books. For the plain sticky notes, I usually use it for a fantasy, sci-fi, contemporary books. While, the Toy Story one is for a romance, cute contemporary books. Whichever sticky notes are, it all depends on my mood to use which. So, yeah.

Here are what I use for each color;

✨ Pink is for love. Things I love, romantic words, cute stuff

✨Yellow is for important thing that I found in the books whether the plots/moments also for characters description.

✨ Blue for things that makes me sad and a scene that touches my heart

✨ Green is for favourite quotes and funny/happy scenes and new words I found in the book.

✨ Orange is for something that I need to found out why such as how that happened? or what actually happened? Also, for any idioms or any metaphor uses in the books.

✨ Purple (for the toy story sticky notes) is for funny/humorous scenes.

*When I'm using toy story sticky notes, the green one will be used only for favourite quotes and new vocabulary. And purple will be used for a funny/happy scene I found in the book.

I never write anything on my books because I, personally do not like it hence the uses of Post-It notes. That's so helpful and I love writing on it. New words that I found or sometimes, I write things like 'oh, how that happened?' or 'omg! that's so cute. you are my favourite characters' and so many other things.

Ever since I found this amazing system to follow on, I have been happily annotating all my books and that also very helpful for me to write my review. I just go back to that particular color sticky notes and refer to them and write my review. ❤

Doing this makes me remember that I always annotate my textbooks back when I was doing my undergraduate study. I use to highlight, writing short notes on my book that will help me to answer my exam/quiz/test. Honestly, by doing that, it is really helpful especially using those beautiful colorful pens. That time I just write it on my textbooks not on a piece of paper or post-it notes because I feel that is so cool to write on my textbook for me to refer it back when I need them. But never on my novel. 🙈

Annotating book is so fun and very helpful when you want to discuss the book you read with your friends and to review the book. It makes your life easier to refer back to the page when you have categorized them all according to all the colors.

Anyway, these are how I annotate my books that makes me reading journey more fun and easy to refer to when I need them.

That's all from me. See you in my next post!

Have you ever annotate your books? How do you do it?

Share you thoughts/opinion in the comment down below.