Thoughts on One Month of Note Taking

24 Jul, 2026

As previously stated in my last monthly log, I've started taking notes on the books I read. It's been a month now since I started, and I think I got enough data to draw some conclusions! This is a report on the matter, and something I hope might help if you're also someone who'd like to take notes to better remember the stuff you read. I'll be retelling my approach with each book I've read so far.

L'uomo che scambiò sua moglie per un cappello (Oliver Sacks)

Starting up with a non-fiction book about the human mind and peculiar neurological conditions, around 300 pages long. I write my notes in a little A6 notebook, and I filled up precisely 11 pages in tiny, packed letters. At the beginning, I wrote down a synthesis of each chapter as I finished it, then I "filled them up" later after finishing a reading session, sometimes even a day or two after. I read this one in digital, so I also highlighted some parts as I read with the idea of coming back to it later; some highlights were made with the only purpose to remind me of what I'd read when I'd need to write a summary of the chapter.
Half of it was stimulating, like when you study up something you like and lit up with pride as your notes grow larger, but the other half was kind of a drag. Overall, I realized I wrote down 11 pages I probably wouldn't read again for leisure or for any reason in particular, and this made me ask myself: what am I taking notes for?

Vanishing Culture (The Internet Archive)

I could answer my previous answer with this other non-fiction publication, about the digital preservation of culture (it's free!). 170 pages, and I only wrote 2 pages of notes! My approach this time was reading the whole thing, then going back to what I'd highlighted on my eReader to sum up what stuck with me the most; sometimes I wrote stuff down even as I was reading, but I mostly read while traveling on the train and I didn't always want to take my notebook out. As for the previous one, I also wrote down in blue some quotes I liked, and they stand out even at a glance so it's pretty good for a quick read.
A great improvement from the previous experiment, but there's still the nagging feeling of "I should write this down" that accompanies me while reading...

L'ignoto ignoto (Mark Forsyth)

INCREDIBLY short, non-fiction book so you'd think taking notes would be useless. I don't think so! Short readings are exactly what one tends to forget the most, I think, because they have less time to linger. I approached this one as I approached Austin Kleon's "Non chiamarla arte" (Don't Call It Art) and Silvia Pesaro's "La galletta del marinaio", all short books that cover a single topic and tend to digress on other things sometimes that make me think "Huh, that's interesting".
They're also the first physical books on my list, so I took a long breath and actually wrote on them in pencil. Tragic. I don't like doing it, but I'm trying to heal from this mindset¹. This video unlocked something in my brain and I thought: why not? It's easy, and I realized highlights on eBooks are quite useful. Going back to a physical book to see your highlights, though, is much more annoying than doing so in digital, so I kind of dreaded doing so and wondered if it was the right approach for longer books.
I think this is when I really started getting it, because earlier on I was more focused on "copying" the information. Since these books were short, and since the way I highlighted certain parts was different than from digital, I often ended up writing my thoughts on what I'd read instead of just the meaning. Stuff like "The author mentions this book and it seems mad interesting", or "This is what the author says but I have my doubts on this detail". At some point I started writing to my future self instead of just trying to "write the right thing", and I believe it's a step in the right direction for me.
As I wrote down in my notes on "Don't Call It Art", Sakichi Toyota (the founder of the car company) has a simple problem solving method: ask yourself "Why?" five times to really get to the core of an issue. Why did I want to take notes? Because I often forget stuff the I read. Why? Because I'm either not focused, or I don't care enough in that moment. Why? Because I've always got a lot on my mind, or I don't know what's important or not. Why? Because everything's so much all the time! And why is that? I actually don't know, and I might be going in circles at this point (I'm not Sakichi Toyota), but I think understanding what's important to me might be the solution. And to figure that out I can't ask anyone else outside of myself. That's why writing it down, if it made an impression in the first place, helps! Or at least, it helps building that skill.

La matematica degli dèi e gli algoritmi degli uomini (Paolo Zellini)

I'll skip "Art and Fear" since I'd be writing exactly what I've written previously (except it was an eBook, so the physical annotations part doesn't apply), so let's go with another non-fiction, physical book that was... a bit of a pain to read! I expected it to be hard since it's heavy on mathematics, but I didn't think I'd have to know so much about philosophy. I enjoyed it, but I didn't get it as much as a person with good domain knowledge would have, which means it's a perfect sample for my research. I didn't stop taking notes as I read, I just highlighted some parts and then skimmed the whole book (with the help of chapter names) to write some overall thoughts on it, after I was done some days later. For a 258 pages book I ended up with a single page of notes, which is way less than what the book offers! But it's something I will surely go back to, since it's everything I've found interesting enough to make place for it, and if I want to read more in-depth I still have my physical, annotated book.
As I mentioned earlier, going through the annotations on a physical book is kind of a pain, but it's not that bad if it's just at the end of the book. This actually highlights one of my main gripes: can I really wait so long to take notes? If I write too often, reading becomes annoying, but if I don't I risk forgetting. It's easier with shorter books (or when I have a lot of time to read), but I might need some notes while I read too and just highlighting text doesn't cut it. Curiously, I think this might be a problem especially with longer fiction, as I've noticed myself while reading "The Murder at the Vicarage"! But I still haven't tried it out, so my re-reading of the Foundation series will probably be my test case.

Otherside Picnic 8 & 9 (Iori Miyazawa)

Finally! A fiction book! A couple, actually. Short books and I practically devoured them, so I ended up writing half a page each which looks more like a personal review than anything else. I did take notes on some details I have thoughts about, though! But all the memorable quotes I highlighted on my eReader stayed there and not on paper.

Il giro del mondo in 80 lingue (Veronica Repetti)

This one I'm still reading, and disregard everything I've said about not taking notes before the book is over! This is because the book is all over the place and I fear I will forget something if I don't take extreme care not to. In any case, I'm basically taking notes of "cool stuff to get ideas from", mostly (linguistic) worldbuilding. As soon as I thought I'd found the right technique, here comes another book that makes me question it again...

And that's it for now. Lots of non-fiction, so I know reading more fiction will reveal a lot more about my methods and the best ones for my needs! But hopefully reading this made you think about yours too.

I'll go drink some water now, speaking of needs that are magically revealed to me once I start thinking about it.

#tips