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Process: Reading nonfiction books

Posted on August 28th, 2012 by Sacha Chua

Process - Reading nonfiction books

Here I resolve to use book darts more often, to review my notes more deliberately, and to try sketchnoting ideas instead of being intimidated by the task of summarizing an entire book on a single page. I’m happy with the ones I did, but they’re hard to do because they require a much closer reading! <laugh>

I like drawing about how I do things. It’s more fun than describing the process with text, and I can annotate it with opportunities for improvement.

More posts about: process, reading, sketches // 4 Comments »

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/23690
  • http://charuzu.wordpress.com Charles

    I had never heard of book darts – but a Google search showed these:
    http://www.bookdarts.com/

    I always read a book with a pencil handy and a strip of paper for a bookmark. I have to confess to making very light margin marks to remind me of text to copy, otherwise I make notes on the slip of paper. Wouldn’t it be inconvenient to have a supply of book darts? Couldn’t you use Post-It notes which can be recycled until they lose their stickiness?

    BTW, I love the drawing in this post!

    Charles

  • http://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondzeitler Raymond Zeitler

    Just curious, have you ever tried Google Books to preview a book? Also, I’m intrigued / envious about how you use Evernote to capture book notes into your archive. I tend to type interesting quotes by hand. (I suppose that makes me very selective about what content I save, though.)

  • http://sachachua.com Sacha Chua

    Raymond: I sometimes use Google Books to bring up a quote if I remember some of it but don’t have it in my book notes. =) I’m experimenting with scanning a few pages of books I’d like to refer back to, but might still need to tweak my scanning workflow.

    Charles: I’ve tried having lots of Post-it flags, but they weren’t particularly reusable for me — adhesives pick up a lot of cat hair. I might try the paper thing so that I don’t end up limited by how many book darts I have handy. =)

    I don’t like marking up books, particularly other people’s books. More experiments!

  • Pingback: How I read books and do visual book reviews » sacha chua :: living an awesome life

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