What kind of notes do you take while reading?

[Tamahome]

Just wondering what kind of notes people take while reading. For example, I tend to forget what characters look like, or which name is which. In a movie you can go by face and tone of voice, but not in a book. There might be some important plot points that I miss or don't understand or forget, that would make reading later parts of the book more enjoyable if I remembered them. Maybe a boring book is a book I don't fully understand.

[Trike]

I only note cool dialogue or interesting bits of writing unless I’m confused and have to go back to figure out what I missed.

For epic books or long-running series, I often flip back to the dramatis personae list (if there is one), to refresh my memory. For books like War and Peace or *especially* Doctor Zhivago where there are families where everyone has the same name, plus have similar-looking first names, and/or have nicknames and aliases, even that doesn’t help.

But other than that, I don’t take notes. I’m reading for pleasure, not doing a book report for school.

[Phil]

When I was young and pretentious I used to write down quotes from books (and songs and movies and tv and people) that I liked. I probably haven't done that for 30 years though.
Like Trike, other than that, I don't take notes. I figure a book I'm reading for pleasure should be well written enough that I remember the details or at least be able to be able to suss them out.

[John (Nevets)]

Even when I was in college I was bad at taking notes while reading text books, and never in the actual book. I would use sticky notes occasionally, but not as often as I probably should have.

Since college, I can't say I've ever done it in a book I read for fun.

Now that I'm doing this beta read, I'm actually taking a few in the kindle app. Mostly just to note typos, but a few other things I want to remember to fill out in the chapter review form.

[John (Taloni)]

I will occasionally highlight passages to mention in the "What Else Are You Reading" thread, but that's about it. As these are mostly library books, they are gone when I return the book.

[Calvey]

Trike wrote:

"For epic books or long-running series, I often flip back to the dramat..."

I do wish more books had the dramatis personae list

[Tassie Dave, S&L Historian]

I used to take note when I was younger (pre-internet), especially with series. As I would forget what happened between books.

But now I don't bother. With series I can use wikipedia to remind me what happened.

[Colin]

I've only ever made notes when reading a textbook for study purposes.

Now that most of my reading is on a Kindle device or app, I do sometimes highlight particularly clever or amusing snippets of text, which then automagically find their way into Goodreads for sharing or just looking back at.

Sometimes I have trouble remembering who a minor character is when the re-appear later in a book, but you just stick a virtual bookmark on the page and use the search function to go see where they featured earlier. (Or the x-ray feature does a version of this for you, if enabled on the book you're reading.)