Read, Respond, Repeat

Resolved: Keep Notes on Your Reading in 2023!

First: You’re invited to an evening of sharing from last year’s reading notes. If you’ve kept notes and want to share, email charoster@outlook.com for details!

Now, for the year ahead, set your resolve to keep notes on your reading journey.

By app or cheap notebook; by spreadsheet or fancy journal; with pen, marker, or stylus – read and remember more with some form of record. The response to what you read is the making of you. 2024-You will be so grateful that 2023-You began this discipline – especially if your journal is the ticket to an evening of delightful conversation!

Reading journals, or commonplace books, have been used since Aristotle’s day to keep memorable passages, personal insights, quotable quotes, and cross-connections all in one place while self-educating by reading. They range from simple to sophisticated – keep a booklist, at least, or make your journal searchable by topic, author, date, and genre. Leave room for a growing table of contents in the front, and an index or year-end wrap-up at the back, or just start on page one and keep going.

I keep a reading stack, and never finish one book without interruption by others, so I leave several pages to add a Table of Contents as I go. After those blanks, the pages are numbered. The page for today’s reading notes follows the title in the ToC, and the hodge-podge of other page numbers for that book follows, as I pick it up again during the year.

Author and citation info should be noted with the title, or on the first notes page for each book. (I say should, because I’ve sometimes skipped this step and wished I hadn’t.) I date the notes page sometimes, and abbreviate the title at the top, then dig in. Some notes go on for several pages before I change books. Others end with “meh” when I decide a book is not worth more time, or “go to typed” when I underlined so much that the book entered my “Type Book Notes” stack.

Enjoyment is the Best Reason

Lindsay Bockwinkel considers her reading journals treasure chests:

“I think of my Commonplace Book as a treasure chest where I can keep the thoughts, ideas, and images I find most inspiring and helpful. It is a pleasure to sit down every now and then and read through them all, and doing so helps me learn them by heart over time. I want to have them “close at hand” (mentally or physically) when I am speaking with a friend who may benefit from them! It is also fascinating to watch themes emerge in the passages I find most interesting, and putting them side by side in a notebook can give the impression of an ongoing conversation between the authors! It has almost become a record of questions being wrestled with and themes unfolding over the years of my reading life.

 There is also something satisfying about responding to a book, even in the simple act of keeping a Commonplace. Even in busy seasons of life, it only takes a few seconds to flag the passages that I want to spend more time with, then sit down for a few minutes to copy it down once Sunday afternoon rolls around.”

I enjoy the criss-crossing and interweaving of ideas during the year (the ‘combinatory play’ that is great for creativity), and the annual look back to pull the best of the best notes (I number the last ten pages of a cheap notebook i-x for this purpose.) into a final precis. I’ve dreamed of creating a topical index, but never get around to it. I may or may not clean up the messy as-you-go Contents pages into one lovely, alphabetized version. The mess is actually part of the year, and I don’t mind it nowadays.

Every Reader Has a Personal Approach

Googling ‘commonplace book’ will lead you to various systems, examples and plans for your book note organization, but don’t get overwhelmed by someone else’s structure. Play with your own form long enough to know what changes are needed to make it more enjoyable, more searchable later, more fun to share with friends over dinner (email me!). Change mid-year if your commonplace book isn’t working for you. Switch to minimalist mode if it’s putting you off reading at all. Don’t invest much in pens or apps until you know what you like, but consider whatever you do spend an investment in learning what you like and what works for you.

A commonplace book is a very personal, very change-able way to make sure more of your reading sticks with you, becomes part of your conversation, and gets placed into touch with other ideas. Don’t worry about doing it perfectly, or even doing it well. It’s a thing worth doing, so (thanks Gilbert) worth doing badly.

Low Tech

Nicki Johnson is an avid reader and ‘commonplacer’ who uses the old-fashioned ‘analog’ notebook method:

“When I read nonfiction, I write narrations about what I’m reading. I like to do this in a simple dollar store composition notebook so that I’m not concerned about writing beautifully. The process here is what matters, not the product. I typically write at the end of each chapter though I might write more or less frequently if the book is particularly dense or light. Charlotte Mason calls narration the act of knowing, and by forcing myself to slow down and process what I’ve read, I come to know it more deeply. I even do this with podcasts and lectures/conferences that I attend. The beauty of having all of these things in one notebook is that they begin to “talk” to one another, and I start making connections between my readings.”

“When a particular passage moves me, whether in fiction or nonfiction, I like to copy it down verbatim. I do this in my Commonplace Book, which is nicer in quality, and I take time to write beautifully. Rather than stopping my reading to grab my notebook and pens, I use the greatest invention of modern times, the book dart, to mark my place in the book. Then, every couple of weeks or so, I find time to commonplace the quotes and thus rescue my book darts for future reading.”

Lindsay uses different notebooks for different subjects:

“I have one Commonplace Book for literature and poetry, and separate notebooks for more practical books on subjects like education and motherhood.  I also make sure to keep a running list of books included on the first few pages of the notebook- both of these practices make it easier to find the quote I’m searching for when I need it! “

High Tech

Nicki’s ‘analog’ notebooks are supplemented by a digital reading record:

“Since 2016 I have used one Excel Workbook with a new worksheet for each year. In the first column I type in any book that I begin. The second column indicates what happened with that book: “X” for completed, “A” for abandoned, “IP” if it’s in progress or “-” to indicate that I read parts of it but don’t plan to finish. The next column begins blank, but as I finish books, I occasionally add an asterisk to indicate that I particularly liked it. The next column includes notes about whether it was a reread, an audiobook or a read aloud with my husband or kids, and the final column is where I make notes about how I heard about this book. It is a delight for me to have years of my reading life documented in one place, and each year I love the reflective practice of tallying the number of books I read and deciding which of my starred books deserves a second asterisk as that year’s favorite.”

Kristen Roper uses Notion, which she describes as “EverNote on steroids. I use it to collect my reading at macro and micro levels with the ability to categorize and tag. I think of it as a digital version of Sertillanges' index card system that he describes in The Intellectual Life.”

I, too, keep an Excel spreadsheet listing of all my typed book notes. I leave my handwritten notes less organized, and leave it to chance and memory (and Providence) what manages to make it into an article or book later. I could practically rewrite my older books now with all new references from more recent reading. Learning is a living, ongoing project for which your reading notes are souvenirs and mile-markers.

Nicki makes a great case for establishing this habit in 2023:

“These journals chronicle my reading and provide a written record of my intellectual life. They are a great treasure and are deeply personal. Even if I didn’t go back through them (which I love to do), the act of simply keeping them has helped me grow into the reader – and the person – that I am today. To be sure, this process slows me down. But that’s part of the beauty in it. When we read, we should not just rush to consume and complete but must give ourselves the time and space to slow down, to be affected and to respond. There’s a prayerful element to do it, a lectio of sorts, that allows us to invite the Holy Spirit into our reading life and thus to be transformed by what we read. After all, isn’t that exactly the point?”

I have juicy 2023 notes on A Godly Humanism, Approaches to Writing, Disarming Beauty, Breath, Sensitive Chaos, Creativity Inc., Christus Vincit, Heart of the World, From Ritual to Theatre, Life Under Compulsion, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, Night’s Bright Darkness, Eugenics and Other Evils, Portraits of Spiritual Nobility, Restoring Humanity, Shark’s Paintbrush, The Emergent Organization, and The Hungry Soul to share. I’m avid to hear what caught your interest last year, and what’s in your stack for the coming year.

Nicki, Lindsay, Kristen and other readers will meet with me to share from our reading notes. Let me know if you want to be there. Please, please email to be invited: charoster@outlook.com.

It’s a conversation I wouldn’t want to miss!