Useful Bookmarks

I worked in libraries for many years. First as a student, then as a Library Technician, which eventually landed me in the area of book preservation.

I got to handle books in all matter of states. From missing pages to missing covers to books so old the pages turned to dust. Once I was asked to restore a book with a many years-old banana sandwiched between the pages. It was about as gross as you might think.

Disturbingly, rotten bananas are not the grossest thing found between the pages of library books.

I learned a lot about how to handle books during that time. I learned how to make covers, how to fix bindings, how to tip in missing pages.

The goal was always to get the book looking as close to its original state as possible, as quickly as possible, so it could return to circulation. It was dirty, time-consuming work but nothing brought me more pleasure than being handed a mess of pages and turning them back into a book.

For a long time I was very precious with my own books. I wouldn’t bend the spine. I wouldn’t curl the pages. God forbid I should write in them.

Then came a point when I realized that I was more concerned with protecting the books than I was in absorbing what the books were telling me. So, I shifted in the opposite direction. I started highlighting passages to my heart’s content and scribbling in the margins.

Writing in books spoke to my philosophy that reading should be a two-way conversation. An active activity instead of a passive one. But highlights and underlined passages have always felt distracting when I go back to re-read something. Stuff that I thought was important in my first read-through might not seem as important in the second.

I’ve bought multiple copies of the same book at times just to have a clean one to read from.

For a while, eBooks were a good solution. This freed me from my inner reflex to coddle and protect books.

Still my main issue persisted: knowledge retention. I would forget almost everything I read, no matter how much I highlighted, no matter how much margin space I took up.

Several years ago, I read the book How to Take Smart Notes which this led me to the Zettelkasten method which led me down the personal knowledge management rabbit hole.

I started my journey with digital knowledge management, until I realized that wasn’t helping much either. It was better, but not quite what I needed.

I decided to ditch the modern interpretation of Zettelkasten with its use of digital tools, and return to the original roots of the process: pen, paper, physical books.

I’d tried taking notes in notebooks before. No use. I’d tried keeping a commonplace book but it proved more time-consuming than useful.

Then I went back to basics and tried reading while using an index card as a bookmark (as Niklas Luhmann used to do) and jotting down notable information as I read.

The hardest part was getting past the annoyance of having to take notes in the first place. But once I got through the initial resistance, I found that this process actually worked. It forced me to read slower and I got more out of what I was reading as a result.

There was no real need to write out quotes verbatim. Just scribble a page number and a few words as reference to help me find the spot later. No need to write in the margins. Just a page number and a thought. Or a plot point. Or whatever feels useful.

At a glance, I can quickly reference what I’ve already read and it serves as an outline of salient pieces of information.

If I haven’t finished the book, I leave the index card(s) between the pages. If I go to reference it later I can scan the index card first and usually find what I’m looking for without having to flip through the whole book or try to skim through a plethora of superfluous highlights. A quick scan also refreshes my memory if I left the book unfinished, no matter how long it’s been since I last picked it up.

The Zettelkasten method takes it all a few steps further (making individual note cards, filing them in a notes box), and while I do take those extra steps for some notes, I’ve found that the lazy approach of just leaving an index card (or piece of paper or post-it note) in a book is already way more useful than anything else I’ve tried before.

And as a bonus, it keeps my books pristine.