To put it lightly, I’m a voracious reader.
My love of reading sparked as I entered college. And my physical library has grown exponentially ever since. But recently, I’ve run out of places to store and display my books.
As a result, I’ve turned in increasing capacity to ebooks and audiobooks. Of the 92 books I finished last year, 12 were digital or ebooks and 22 were audiobooks.
This has been a difficult transition for me to make. Even as someone born into the digital age, the world makes the most sense to me when I can hold things in physical form. I enjoy sitting down with a book in my hands and a pencil or highlighter resting on my ear as I read and mark the pages.
That said, I’ve sought ways to replicate that reading experience with ebooks. In the process, I’ve created a digital reading method that’s helped me to read 3–8 books per month for the last three years.
I hope this article encourages you to use the reading practices below as you tackle your library.
The Four-Color Highlighting System
Highlighters play a critical role in my physical and digital reading systems. The difference between both methods is how many I use.
When I sit down with a physical book, I use only one highlighter color throughout, using any color of my choosing. I highlight the key passages and then underline supporting information in pencil.
For digital books, I get more specific.
Ebook services can offer you a wide selection of highlighter colors to work with. Amazon’s Kindle, for example, offers four colors: red, orange, yellow, and blue.
Whereas with a physical book, I would choose one of those colors, with digital books, I use all of them.
Each highlighter color that I use for a digital book has a defined purpose for every ebook in my library.
Using the Kindle default colors, my system looks something like this:
Yellow: Key Information
Orange: Supplementary/Supporting Information
Blue: Direct quotations, often those not by the author
Red: Key Terms & Their Definitions
Why So Many Colors?
You’ll notice that yellow highlights take the role of my normal highlighting method. With yellow highlights, I’m focusing on the key information the author wants to convey.
For example, this yellow highlight from “Bayard Rustin: A Legacy of Protest and Politics” edited by Michael G. Long emphasizes Rustin’s role in the American Civil Rights Movement.
Orange highlights replace my method of underlining in pencil. The orange highlights allow me to record supporting information for my yellow highlights. Having a separate category of highlights keeps the key highlights concise. It also ensures you don’t lose any information that’d be critical for future review.
This orange highlight, for example, provides supporting information for the key takeaway above it.
Yellow and orange highlights cover most of my annotations. However, the easy access to other colors allows me to take my reading practice even further.
When I go back and review my highlights for a physical book, I’m able to see direct quotations in their entirety. I can see the quotation marks or indentation on the page and the attribution for who said the passage.
With digital highlights, I may have highlighted an excerpt from a quote. With no quotation marks or attributions nearby, how do I know if the passage is from the author or someone else?
When highlighting a direct quote, I highlight it in blue and leave a comment saying who that quote is from.
The above blue highlight is a quote from A. Philip Randolph.
The note is often a simple “Quote from [NAME OF SPEAKER/AUTHOR OF QUOTE].” That’s usually more than enough to ensure that I don’t misquote someone.
For example, the note here is for the above blue highlight. Here, the original speaker’s full name is written for future reference. The original text only mentions Randolph’s last name.
I also often return to particular books for a reminder of specific terms an author has used. I highlight these terms and their full definitions in red.
For example, this red highlight states the definition of the term “civil resistance.”
Why I Prefer Reviewing Digital Books
I designed this highlighting system with the standard set of e-reader tools in mind.
Most systems allow you to filter your highlights by color. If want to generate a summary of the book’s key takeaways, I can filter through my yellow highlights.
Filtering is also useful if I want a complete list of relevant terms used throughout the book. A filter of red highlights presents a list of every key term I identified along with the definitions.
The ability to filter is helpful when I’m compiling or sharing material. If someone wants the key takeaways from a book I read, I can send a list of yellow highlights or use them to write a summary.
This simple method of sharing has encouraged me to read more digital books. It is now a part of my digital book reading process then upload my highlights to Glasp. This platform allows me to share what I’ve learned on a public profile that anyone can view. My Glasp profile provides a simple way to share my reading activity and what has caught my interest.
Glasp provides me with an easy and accessible way of sharing my Kindle highlights. You can import your highlights from the Kindle Cloud Reader.
My increased comfort with reading digital books has eased my book storage conundrum. It has also allowed me to travel with more reading material at my disposal.
The way I read digital books will continue to change as new platforms and tools become available. For now, I’m happy with the digital reading system I’ve developed.
Whether you follow this system or not, I encourage you to add some form of digital reading to your regular schedule. I can’t think of a better use of one’s screen time than that.
Socials:
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