How To Annotate Books – Supplies and Easy Ideas!

Hello friends! Today I’m going to teach you how to annotate books! Annotation is a really fun process, and I think everyone should try it out.

What does it mean to annotate a book?

Annotating a book means adding notes or personal comments in your books. This can be for academic purposes, like studying literary devices, or just for fun!

My annotations usually consist of my thoughts while reading, vine references, and other things I find relevant to the book’s content. Let’s learn how to annotate books!

Why you should annotate your books

• Because it’s fun. That’s the main reason I annotate books. Yes, you can annotate them for your classes or homework, but annotating a book for fun is different. You can write down your wildest thoughts or your bad takes or hilarious comments. There are no rules. However, if you need more convincing, here are some other reasons:
• It helps with your memory – I still remember what happened in Furyborn (a fantasy book I read over three years ago) because I annotated it and took notes. The same with Aurora Rising. It really helps you remember what happens in a book.
• You get a better understanding of the book – Annotating a book can often help you look at it more critically. It helps with understanding the plot, story, characters, and structure better.
• You want to write more in-depth book reviews – I’m not saying you have to annotate books to write good book reviews. However, annotating a book can sometimes help you formulate your review and point out things you liked or disliked.

I could list many more reasons, but I think the main one stands: just have fun!

{Want more blogging, reading, and journaling tips? Check out my resource library!}

Supplies for Annotating Books

The first thing you need is some supplies. Here are some supplies I use when annotating books:

• Multicolour pens,
• black pens,
• highlighters,
• sticky notes,
• sticky tabs,
• pencils,
• and note cards or a notebook.

I use these to annotate my books, especially the sticky tabs. I use a pack of 8 colour sticky tabs (pictured) to annotate. I love colour coding with annotating, it’s kind of the easiest way to get started. I’m not going to add where I bought all of my supplies because they’re all from South African stores, but you should be able to get these at your local stationery store!

Now that you have all of your supplies, you need a book annotation colour key!

Book Annotation Colour Key

I think one of the biggest struggles people have when trying to figure out how to annotate books is deciding on a book annotation colour key. It doesn’t have to be complicated, just follow your heart! Most of the time I try to match my sticky tabs to the cover of the book, but there really are no rules. Grab your pack of sticky notes and assign a colour to whatever it is that you want to annotate.

My basic book annotation colour key looks like this:

• Red – Scenes that make me angry/things I dislike
• Pink – Romance moments
• Orange – Important Stuff/Relatable moments
• Yellow – Worldbuilding
• Green – Representation
• Blue – Sad moments/scenes that make me sad
• Dark Purple – Favourite quotes/moments
• Light Purple – Character Building

As soon as you have the colours assigned, you can also match the sticky notes to your colour pens and highlighters.

For example, if you’re reading a book and the characters kiss for the first time, you can highlight it with pink, place a pink tab, and even write your thoughts with a pink pen. Make sure to buy fineliner-type pens that don’t bleed through the pages. My advice is to have a few different kinds of pens, as books sometimes have different types of pages.

Here’s an example of how to annotate books from Aurora Rising, where I tabbed a relatable scene with orange:

I also stick the annotation key in the front of the book!

Which Books should you annotate?

You might be asking yourself, which books can I annotate? The short answer? Any book! You can completely do what you want with annotation. There doesn’t have to be any rhyme or reason to it, you can just go with your gut.

Personally, though, there are a few types of books I’m more likely to annotate than others.

• Firstly, I’d annotate books I’m reading for a book club. As we have some in-depth discussions about these books, I want to really get into them. So I’m more likely to annotate a book club book.
• Secondly, I’d annotate books I reread and previously gave five stars to. It takes some time to annotate books, and it often stretches out the reading process. That’s why I only want to put my time and effort into a book I already know I love. It’s not a hard rule though. Sometimes I’ll annotate books on a first read that I know I’ll love (or sequels of books I loved).
• Finally, I’d annotate books I need to review. I receive a lot of books from publishers and Netgalley, and as mentioned before, annotating helps me write those reviews. Do I do this for all my review copies? No. But for most of them, I have some sort of annotation process.

How to Annotate Books for fun!

I use many different ways of annotations, depending on the book and if I’m in the mood for it. Let’s look at how to annotate books for fun!

First, decide what you’re going to be annotating. Here are some ideas for what to annotate:

• Favourite quotes
• Favourite pieces of character dialogue
• Worldbuilding elements, like for example descriptions of a magic system or setting
• Highlight parts of the book that you make sad
• Highlight parts of the book that make you laugh
• Highlight any references to other books or pop culture
• If you’re rereading the book, you can highlight any foreshadowing you might have missed on the first read
• Write down random thoughts you have while reading
• Write down any ideas you have while reading
• Highlight romantic moments between characters
• If you’re artistic you can add some doodles to your books
• You can also stick pictures and stickers in your books, see an example here!

Book Annotation Examples

Using all the tabs

The fully monty, as I like to call it, is annotating with all the bells and whistles. During this annotation, I write in the book with different colours, I highlight and underline in the book and tab the book. This one takes the longest because you need to do so many things, but this is also my favourite style. I like leaving different parts of myself in books, and I like sharing my thoughts with books.

Using only one tab

I did this for Midnight Sun while I was reading it. This is just where I write my thoughts in the book, and I would occasionally tab a page with one colour if I want to revert back to it later.

Using note cards/notebook

The one is the easiest style. I mostly do this for my review books. I would place notecards every 100 pages or 50 pages and then write my thoughts on those notecards. This involves no tabs or writing in books. Alternatively, you can also use those translucent sticky notes if you want to avoid writing in your books.

There Are No Rules!

There are no set rules for how to annotate books. You can annotate any way you want. You can tab as much or as little as you want, or use as many colours as you want. This is just usually how I annotate, so you can try it out and see if it works for you.

Book Annotation Inspiration!

Check out some of these amazing annotation posts for inspiraion on how to annotate books!

I hope you’ve found this post useful! You can also check out my follow-up post (which includes some free printables!).

How to annotate books for fun!

Let me know in the comments if you enjoy annotating!