The genesis of developing a quotation system

About six months ago I found myself wanting to reference a story from the book Van Troff’s Cylinder by Janusz Zajdel (a great dystopia that puts the reader in the place of the novel’s action), but I couldn’t remember it precisely, even though I read it 3 years ago. By trial and error and experimenting with different techniques, I managed to develop my own method of note-taking while reading books.

The assumptions

In developing the method, I was driven by the following assumptions:

• The method is to help remember content for a long time after it has been read.
• The method is to enable efficient recall of content long after reading. (When I have already managed to forget).
• The method must not interfere with the reading process so strongly that it causes distraction.

Method

Reading environment

If I can, I read books on my Kindle (with the internet on it to sync where I left off). This allows me to read on my phone when I don’t have the reader with me, exactly from where I left off on the reader.

If a book contains a lot of diagrams or pictures, then I buy it in hard copy, which makes it easier to work on the content.

Reading

When reading a book, I focus purely on immersion - I turn off the indicator of how many percent I have already read and the hour in the Kindle.

If a fragment of the book clearly stands out (resonates) I highlight it. If I don’t know a word, I highlight it and look it up in the dictionary. Sometimes it may be a lack of knowledge of the meaning of a word in the native language, and sometimes it may be a lack of knowledge of the translation in a foreign language book.

Book development

• I import the highlights from the Kindle into Obsidian on my computer using the Obsidian Kindle Plugin.
• I create a book note (separate, different from the note with imported highlights) where I mark in the metadata information about the book (name, author, etc.) as well as information when I read it. Adds links to existing (or not) notes on topics covered in the book.
• I add references to highlights from a note containing highlights from the book. I add my thoughts to the highlights.

The process of processing highlights and reading are two separate events separated clearly in time. Waiting an appropriate amount of time before starting to process allows me to gain a broader horizon and naturally process the content I have read. Only after a certain period of time do I return to the content of the book. Familiarizing myself with the highlights helps me recall parts of the book and my thoughts that I have acquired in between.

The processed book note serves as a reference for developing the issues covered in the book, which are the topics (“topic notes”) written out at the beginning of the note.

Learning vocabulary

• I open Vocabulary Builder in Kindle.
• Deletes accidentally added words.
• Based on the words I don’t know, I create a flashcard. I save the word to the list of flashcards and mark it as “Mastered” in Kindle.
• I use the created fiches to learn vocabulary using a box with dividers (Leitner system).