HOW I ANNOTATE | simple and easy + what supplies i use🖋

if this actually stays throughout the video it will be a miracle I'm already scared hello everybody and welcome back to my Channel today I'm going to be doing a video that I've been meaning to redo for quite a while because today I want to talk all about my updated annotation process also this video is very kindly being sponsored by Squarespace and we will talk about them in a bit now I know that there are like a million different annotation videos that are probably on YouTube at this point and honestly I'm probably not going to be telling you anything new but I wanted to make an updated version because I made one back in 2021 I think and that video is fine I just don't annotate like that anymore so I wanted to make an updated one in case anybody had any questions about how I specifically annotate so I can direct them to one that's a little more accurate if they should want to watch it so that is what we are going to be doing today I hope you guys are excited I certainly am because I love annotating it is one of my favorite ways to to interact with a book aside from just like reading it so we're just going to talk about all of it basically we're going to be talking about why I annotate the supplies that I use the ways that I annotate and then at the end I do want to talk about a couple of different like annotating adjacent things they kind of annotating kind of just um making your books a little more personalized to you I know annotating is not for everybody some people just really don't understand why you would want to annotate a book that you're not reading for school but honestly I think it's fun and as somebody who talks about books a lot online I find it to be very helpful especially when I'm like you know maybe reviewing something maybe referring back to a book that I've read a couple of years ago but there are definitely some other reasons as to why you would want to obviously it's really good for story retention I feel like I definitely remember the books that I annotate the most and it's really easy to just go back and kind of get a refresher on a book if I have annotated it previously it allows me to interact with the text and the characters just on a different level I feel like kind of having this convers ation back with the book it just makes the reading experience that much more fun and engaging and enjoyable and one of the other like very main reasons why I love to do it so much is being able to flip back through a book that I annotated two years ago 3 years ago whatever and it really puts me back into that moment in time when I was reading that book honestly I can't tell you how many times a week I'll just like peruse my bookshelf for books that I have previously annotated and I just like flip through it for a little bit mainly I'm flipping through my copies of The Inferno devices but sometimes I will switch it up and look at something different but it's just another way for me to better remember my reading experience for some of my favorite books and obviously because they're my favorites I want to kind of relive that in a way and I feel like annotating allows me to do that even though I mainly annotate the fantasy books that I read I do love annotating Classics as well and I feel like especially with Classics annotating is super helpful obviously um for like you know pulling out themes and motifs and whatever the book is trying to tell you but I feel like the act of annotating a classic especially makes the reading experience more casual a lot of Classics obviously have a very different writing style than what we're used to now and it feels very formal but being able to interact with the characters in the classics in a very nonformal way through annotating just makes it a really enjoyable experience like for example in my copy of Great Expectations which is look at the annotations I love my annotations on this book but I literally have a attack for pip being dumb and it's just moments where pip is being stupid and it is me calling him out and I feel like feel like me and pip really bonded over those moments you know those are just the reasons that I love to annotate but there are honestly a million different things that you could get out of annotating especially if you're reading more like Classics I think annotating would be really helpful if you're like studying them or if you just want to understand them on a deeper level and really go in to what is being said and what is being done but the same thing could be said for genre fiction as as well if you just want to dissect the text in a different way than just the normal reading experience would give you annotating is perfect now we can talk about supplies I feel like I have truly streamlined my annotating process because for the most part I just annotate every single book in the same way and it's just so much easier that way but when I made my initial annotating video I was annotating like underlining things and color coding things I had these opaque tabs and like I I don't like this anymore Main I'm talking about the opaque tabs I think they're very useful for other things but not as actual annotating tabs because if you want to reread the book you have to like take every single Tab out so you can read what's under them and honestly I don't know what I was thinking but I do think those tiny opaque tabs can be useful in annotating maybe if you don't want to do anything permanent you can write your thoughts on that and like stick it in but as somebody who will def face their books to no end I do just write in the book so I like having clear tabs now and I just want to show you my two favorites the first ones they're basic you know them you love them they're just these I found these in a pack on Amazon they were like eight bucks for like 10 of these or so you get a lot of different colors honestly I've used a lot of the good colors out of these packs so these aren't looking too cute but well these Blues are nice yeah these are good but my favorite tabs to use in annotating are these spiky tabs that I found on Amazon I think the spiky Tabs are so fun they just add like a little something different to the book and recently I have been experiment ING with like mixing the flat tabs and the spiky tabs for example in like the night circus you can say I have some spiky tabs have some flat tabs and it's just like it makes it more fun it makes it a little more visually interesting when you're flipping through it and I think the spiky Tabs are also a good way to maybe signify like really important parts or like really important things that you were looking for in the book and it's just a different way to differentiate what you're tabbing as for my pen I use the trusty pilot G2 gel pen I use it in the 7 size but maybe a smaller size size would work better for you it's really personal preference I find that these don't smudge they might ghost like a little bit on the other side let me see here I feel like it really depends on like the uh the type of paper that you're using but it's not too bad I just really like having a gel pen that's nice and juicy you know to write things down and this one's just my favorite I've been using pilot g2s for an eternity honestly and I will never look back I do have some other pens that I sometimes used when I'm doing more like I don't want to call it decorative but like it is kind of decorative things um but I use a pigma FB pen when I want to like maybe put some Stars somewhere maybe I want to do a little Doodle somewhere it's kind of like a short brush pen I guess I would call it and then I do also have a fine liner that I will sometimes use in those Doodles as well and here I have an art Alternatives pigment liner I picked this up from Jo-ann's it's basically just a pigma mild liner but cheaper and I really like it I feel like it's honestly the same quality but less expensive and then sometimes I will highlight in my books for the most part I don't do this because I can't draw like straight highlight lines to save my life and I'm certainly not getting out a ruler to like Aid with that so it really depends I mainly will just highlight Classics for whatever reason I feel like that just kind of works better but in like normal fantasy books I don't I don't really know why that's just kind of what it is but if I do decide I want to highlight we have the oops these babies these are the zebra mild liners obviously I'm sure a lot of you know about them I love them I feel like they are the best for highlighting and they come in so many colors obviously they're very pretty I have been collecting these for years and I just love having a good selection of these to choose from and I can kind of match them to my tab color as well for example I have this light blue Highlight with my light blue tab it's just a really nice look something else that I've been using recently that would also really be good if you're looking for non-permanent anotation options and they are these book darts Simon te sent me these so shout out to them but they are literally just like little metal tabs that you stick onto the pages of your books I have some of these stuck in the night circus I think I started using them when I was filming like spoiler filled reading blogs so I would like know to come back to this certain part but I kind of just left them in there and I kind of like how it looks but they just stick on the page like this and I think it's really fun it adds like a different material if you want to kind of just you know spice things up and again it's like just a different way to differentiate things that you're tabing and it'll pull your attention to them a little bit more than like just the normal tabs do but these are really fun I have seen these at like some indie bookstores that I've been to and I'm a big fan you can get them from bookd darts.com look at that and they come in like three different colors cuz you have like um gold brass and silver I'm a big fan of the silver ones but yeah they're really good too but I did want to mention that if you're looking to annotate your books but like not go too far into it you know and then another good like non-permanent kind of option is to use Post-it notes obviously I will not say too much much about it because I feel like that's pretty self-explanatory I got a pack of Post-it notes like a bunch of different cool tones from Target like four years ago they're still going strong always a good option so before we get into my annotating process and what I like to annotate I do want to quickly talk about the sponsor of this video which is Squarespace if you guys don't know Squarespace is the perfect onlineone platform if you're looking to expand your brand and build your own website and Squarespace is great because you don't need any coding experience to build your own website I have gone through a couple of coding classes in my day and I'm really bad at them so being able to 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ready to launch you can use the code Katie is reading to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain so thank you so much to Squarespace for sponsoring this video and supporting me and my channel and to you guys as well for always supporting me in my channel and let's get back into talking about annotating so we can now get into talking about my annotating process honestly it is very simple basically I just always put like brackets around the part of the text on the page that I want to talk about and I would just put the corresponding tab on there sometimes I will like Circle things or like underline things that I maybe want to like draw attention to but for the most part keeping it simple just like works really well for me cuz doing that doesn't really take me out of the story but I feel like if I were to go back and do like my coordinating underline matching with the tab thing that definitely did take me out of the story and I know that very well because when I read the last hours earlier this year I decided I wanted to make my annotating key match what I was doing in like chain of gold and chain of iron because I read those two years ago and that was when I was doing like this kind of thing and I hated it honestly I was not a fan of going back to doing it this way I would not recommend like the uh the underlining thing unless you really want to if you feel like that would be beneficial for you then obviously otate that way but I just don't think it worked for me for the most part I start out with these same kind of things that I'm looking for in every book I'm looking for just generally things that I like things that I don't like really beautiful writing quotes and I also have a general tab in every single book that I annotate that's kind of just a catch all honestly I couldn't annotate without my general tab because I feel like I would spent too much time deliberating over like what category this thing would have to go under but I just slap a general tab on it and we're good to go so for every book I start with that basic annotation key and then as I progress through the book and I see things that start to recur I will also start to annotate those as well but if there is maybe a specific reason that I picked up a book I will like start tabing that from the beginning as well for example with Great Expectations I mainly picked this book up because I love the last hour so much by Cassandra clir and this is the book that that series is based off of and I figured since I love that Series so much I should read the classic that it is based on so I do have a red tab in here for all of my just connections to the last hours they all of my red tabs and there's a lot of them and that made the reading experience so fun because I was always on the lookout for connections I would try to like go back in my copies of the last hours and maybe like find something and connect it to like what's happening in here and it made me feel like I was a scholar you know don't mention the fact that I was feeling like a scholar while I was connecting this piece of classic literature to a shadow Hunters book but it was still really fun and kind of another example if I could get this out of of here we have half a soul which I read earlier this year and in this one I do have a tab that is specifically talking about how Moving Castle my yellow tab in this book is titled probably me talking about how was Moving Castle and there were a lot of them because that is one of the reasons that I picked up this book as well because the main character is very reminiscent of Hal and just like some general things that are happening throughout the story very reminiscent of Hal's Moving Castle and it has made this book so like Anonymous with how's Moving Castle for me and the same thing with great expectations it's very synonymous with like the last hours and I feel like just being able to make those connections to oh it was so fun I loved it so much but I feel like there are so many different things that you could want to look for and annotate in a book and let me give you some examples I have a tab in all of my Classics for new information but I think you could also do this in a more modern book when you find like words that you don't know I love to write down the definitions of words that I come across that I am unfamiliar with and I think it's a really fun way to expand your vocabulary if the book is following a couple of different povs you could kind of give each character their own tab for example in vicious by V Schwab you were following two main characters Victor and Eli and they both got their own Tab and it's an easy way to keep track of characters especially when you're going on to like even more points of view when it can maybe get confusing it's really good to be able to refer back to that especially in a book where the characters are so different like the dichotomy between Victor and Eli is the point of this book so I feel like especially in this one them having their own tabs makes a lot of sense for fantasy books in general it's really good to have a World building tab especially when you're jumping Maybe into a long series with a very complex World build really just anything that you are noticing a lot that you may want to keep track of is perfect for annotating kind of a final example here I have a chain of gold they talk about literature A Lot in this series and they're always talking about books so I decided to add a tab for every time they mention a new book and honestly there are just a million different things that you could possibly annotate it is very specific to the book that you're reading and the type of reader that you are based on what you want to annotate but I hope maybe that gave you a few ideas also more on the aesthetic side of my annot in process I love picking a good color palette for a book for example we have vicious I picked like an orange and red color palette for half a soul we have like greens and yellows and I feel like that's what really makes annotating fun because you can literally pick any color palette you want if you have the appropriate amount of tabs for it that is why I have so many I have two things of tabs here and honestly I'm still running out now moving into the very last section in this video which is probably where a lot of people would think it gets a little superflu but this is what makes it fun and these are all of my annotating adjacent things so they're just ways that you can further personalize the book make it really unique to you and just really enhance your reading experience the first one being one of my personal favorites and that is doodling I will draw on the cover pages over the normal text maybe at like different chapters or different parts if I just am really feeling the inspiration to do like a little Doodle I think it's really fun to add in there something recently that I decided to add into one of my books was a Spotify playlist ID thing I found this playlist that I was listening to when I was reading the night circus and that oh that playlist is so good it is just full of like magical Whimsical circusy songs so I decided to print out the little ID thing with like the playlist cover on it and I stuck it in the book so every time I decide I want to go back and reread the book I will know that I need to go listen to the playlist while I do so and the last thing is probably the most involved thing that you could possibly do but recently I have done a little bit of like I don't want to call it collaging necessarily but just decorating the front page in a more elaborate fashion for example I did this with my copy of chain of gold and I had such a fun time doing it and it is so fun to go back and do this to some of your favorite books you could put little Doodles on it you could put quotes from the book you could print out little pictures from Pinterest and put them on there use washi tape you literally put anything on here and I think it just further makes the book so much more special and the best part about all of these things really is that you could make these totally non-permanent if you stick things in with removable adhesive maybe or if you put them in on Post-it notes and maybe if you're wanting to dive back into one of your favorite books without fully rereading it you could decide hey maybe I want to like decorate some pages of one of those books today and it's a really it's just so much fun honestly that's just what annotating is for me it's so fun I love being able to write down all of my initial thoughts on a book it makes the reread so fun I love looking back through them and if you are scared of writing in your books I totally get it I was definitely there with you as well before I truly started annotating I saw people annotating when I was watching just like reading Vlogs I was like what are you doing but now like 3 years later I'm like I can't imagine not annotating in my books but you could totally do very non-permanent ways to start out with kind of see if you're liking it for example when I first read vicious because vicious was the very first book that I ever annotated however these are not my original annotations because I reread this book a couple of months ago and I redid my annotations but originally I just like cut up some Post-it notes I used those as my tabs I wrote in pencil so I could erase it if I wanted to and I just kept it really casual literally annotating can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be it's really just about what you decide you want to look for and do with your books so I really hope this video was helpful honestly I will take any opportunity I can to talk about annotating because it is one of my favorite things so I hope you guys enjoyed it as well if you did I would love to know down below obviously do you guys annotate your books like what's your what's what's your process what's your method if you do or maybe if you don't annotate your books do you ever want to do you ever think about it or is it just like not even an option like would you just never consider it I'm very curious but with that I'm going to let you guys go so thank you so so much for watching this video also before we go I did want to give a big thanks to everybody over on my patreon if you guys are ever looking for more content for me so always link down below we always do some fun stuff over there and with that I am actually going to go so I will see you all in my next video [Music]

Channel: katie is reading

Views: 131,670

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Id: UxvsgqCTekU

Length: 19min 28sec (1168 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2023