To read fiction, I just need to pick up a book and look at the pages right? I do this every day as one of my habits and my dedicated daily time to being unplugged, as I spend my life on my phone/laptop otherwise.

But reading is a key entry point to my PKM system. I’ve covered my non-fiction reading processes elsewhere, so today I am discussing how I read fiction.

Now this sounds super intense… I don’t think it is. In reality, I just read but as a PKM fan, a by-product of reading things I’m interested in is that I want to remember what I read, because it’s interesting! So that’s where the note-taking app comes in. Coming up with a narrative for this process is something I’m doing to explain it for Medium, rather than something I rigidly stick to. I do what makes sense in the moment, but most of the time, it looks like what I describe below!

What fiction?

I think this is an important starting point.

My PKM hobby is from the perspective of a history fanatic. I truly want to know everything about history and politics and find how it all connected.

I’m particularly curious about how the the things I am interested in are represented in media, i.e books and on the screen. These representations are essentially launch pads for further research, and insights into connections I wouldn’t ordinarily find. I then take notes on what I’ve watched or read, plus what I’ve subsequently researched. I then want to organise those notes in a logical but fun way. And that’s how I came up with My Version of Wikipedia. It’s such good fun.

As such, I mainly read historical fiction, but even if it’s a different genre I’m still looking for the historical connection!

Which tools help me do this?

To achieve this goal, I use three apps.

Notion- Media Database

This media database is an archive of all media I’ve consumed since Oct 2020, and it’s very much integrated with BethOS, which is my Notion LifeOS. I have a specific page for fiction which aggregates my fiction books from the media database and my reading challenge progress.

Hookmark- connect Notion and Capacities

I connect this database via Hookmark to Capacities, which is my well-documented favourite note-taking app.

Capacities- my dream note taking app

I’ve talked a lot about why I use Capacities, but the set up is perfect for recognising that the interests I have (historical events, people, ideas) will be referenced in multiple pieces of media. For example, there isn’t only one book and one film about the British Royal Family.

I want to be able to take notes in context (the media) and extract what is interesting (historical events and people). I want to assign certain properties to pages based off what type of content they hold (e.g dates of historical events, or the nationality for a person), and Capacities’ objects work in that exact way.

I want to read hundreds of books that talk about the same time periods so I get a richer understanding and varying viewpoints and representations of that time (both fiction and non-fiction), and Capacities’ networked note-taking approach is perfect for this because I can connect anything in there.

What is the process?

Reading

Now everything I said above is obviously very digital, which suits my long-term goals. But as I am always on my laptop, I now consciously choose to read physical books only; my initial notes on the book, and my thoughts whilst reading are literally scribbles on the physical book.

I underline interesting words, I annotate thought-provoking phrases, I add question marks to points I don’t yet understand. I also fold the spine and the tops of pages to remind me to come back to things later. I’m essentially externalising the reaction I have to what I’m reading, ready for future Beth to pick up with her note-taking brain on later.

I also make a list in the blank pages at the back of most books of the famous people, events, locations etc that come up. These correspond to my object types in Capacities. It’s what I’m interested in, so my Capacities structure matches that.

Typically, the only deviation from this consciously slower physical annotation (vs highlighting on the kindle app) is when there’s a big chunk of text I want to come back to. In that case, I’ll photograph it for later, and then use the iPhone OCR to copy the text into Capacities later.

Note-taking

After I’ve finished the book, the first step is going to Notion and finding the entry in my media database. Here’s what I do:

1. I update the status (which triggers an automation that adds my book to my yearly reading challenges)

2. I give the book a rating

3. I summarise my thoughts on it very briefly.

Next, if I’ve made any annotations, it’s time to go to Capacities, via Hookmark.

I use Hookmark to create an entry in Capacities with the same name as the Notion entry. I open Hookmark (option + H), I press command + N, and the page is created.

Then I need to switch the object type. The default entry is page, but these books are what I class as media objects so I change that. This gives it some properties. I fill them in, then write my takeaways in the page.

I review my all my scribbles and annotations and just build out the page. There’s no direction really here, just whatever I’m feeling inspired by after reading, and whatever the book has touched on that I’m interested in.

I make sure to organise it with headings for easy navigation, and I do try to write in full cohesive sentences, so that the links I create from this media page are well contextualised.

There are two examples of my reading notes above, and I’ll dig into what you can see a little more.

If you compare the left sidebars you’ll see that I only fill in properties where it makes sense to me. Winter of the World is part of a huge trilogy spanning 100 years, so therefore the years it does span, and what it tells me about those years, is contextually important to me. Conversely, the Remains of the Day struck me more about longer eras of British history, so I didn’t add all the years in. That’s just my reading of the two books, but Capacities lets me have loads of properties in my media object that can be hidden when empty, so I can just pick what I need, hence ‘Years’ not being empty in Winter of the World, but being empty in The Remains of the Day.

The right sidebars give a peek at how I might structure the pages- lots of headings means the automatic table of contents. I did a pretty deep dive into Winter of the World because that trilogy lit a history fire within me that gave me weeks worth of things to research, which was excellent fun, whereas the Remains of the Day was initially too clever for me, but I had some brainwaves after. I don’t really have specific goals to reach in each page here, I just write what makes sense to me at the time!

If we look at the main windows, you’ll see how I extract some information from the book. In Winter of the World, I can see how Ken Follett is representing the Battle of Midway and the US response to it (hence the link to Battle of Midway), and I was so baffled at how America was able to produce so many aircraft carriers, I asked the AI Assistant to explain how that was possible, and I embedded that answered question in the notes.

Conversely, in the Remains of the Day, I first picked out some really surface level things that were in line with some of the research I’d been doing into the British aristocracy previously. I also was fascinated to see what a butler thought of the use of a butler’s pantry, as I’ve seen them increasingly pop up on modern floorplans. Perhaps not many people have a note on that, but I love floorplans so it’s unsurprising I’ve picked this up.

Do I do this for all fiction books?

Nope! But as mentioned above, I mostly read historical fiction, and of all the books out there, I pick the ones that align with my interests, so it’s unsurprising I take a lot of notes on my reading, but there’s no pressure attached here.

Similarities with non-fiction reading

My non-fiction reading involves having literature notes in one place, and my summarised, processed notes in Capacities. I feel this is echoed with my fiction reading. I guess this is just how I like to deal with knowledge, it’s slow and conscious and Capacities is where I really can expand my mind. I really think it’s the best place for it (for me).

So there we go, how I take fiction notes for the books with interesting things (not so catchy).

Are you a book annotator or do you like to keep them in pristine condition? Let me know!