How I Read Books and Make Reading Notes | Psychopunk No.026

My private tips on how I read and take reading notes.

Hi everyone. I’m Zhichao Wei.

Recently, I started a paid Ximalaya program called Zhichao Wei: In-Depth Talks on Cutting-Edge Psychology Books. Someone left a message asking whether I could share how I read books and make reading notes. I got a little carried away writing the answer—one thing led to another, and I ended up with enough material for a whole episode. So we decided to turn it into a special episode of that program. We figured that our Psychopunk friends might also be interested in reading and making reading notes, so we’re sharing the episode here as the latest installment of Psychopunk.

Here is my private, hard-won experience of how I read books and make reading notes.

Here we’ll focus only on the more technical parts—whether to read ebooks or paper books, what software to use for reading, what software to use for notes, and how to organize everything. Some people have also asked how to choose books, which books are more valuable, whether to read fast or slowly, and whether to skim or read closely…

Those are all important questions too, of course. But an episode can only be so long, so we’ll save them for another time.

Paper Books or Ebooks?

I used to love buying books, and I had piles of paper books at home. But in recent years, unless there’s absolutely no alternative, I hardly ever read paper books. The reason is simple: ebooks are not only easier to carry; more importantly, they make taking reading notes incredibly convenient.

I read ebooks on my phone or iPad. I never bought the much-praised Kindle reader.

Some people say that only devices like Kindle, with screens that don’t emit their own light, can protect your eyes. That’s not actually true.

Reading on a phone or iPad can hurt your eyes either because older phone screens used to have poor pixel density—which is almost no longer an issue—or because the screen brightness is set too low or too high. As long as you adjust the brightness to roughly match the ambient light, your eyes won’t get much more tired than they would reading a non-luminous paper book or a Kindle.

In fact, if the lighting isn’t good enough, reading a paper book can be harder on your eyes.

Software: Duokan Reading + Evernote

For both reading ebooks and taking notes, regardless of which of the formats I’m about to discuss, I use Duokan Reading + Evernote.

My first choice for buying ebooks is Duokan Reading’s bookstore. Even if I buy the Kindle edition on Amazon, I’ll still “get” it into Duokan (though I can’t go into the specifics here).

Once I’ve “gotten” an ebook into Duokan Reading, the first thing I do is link my Evernote account to Duokan Reading. Then all the highlights and annotations I make in Duokan Reading are automatically synced to Evernote.

Three Kinds of Notes

I make three kinds of notes in Duokan:

The first is highlighting: marking important sentences.

The second is reading reflections. After you highlight something in Duokan, an option pops up and lets you choose “annotation,” where you can write down your thoughts on that passage or a summary you’ve distilled from it.

Here’s a little trick. I usually read on my backup phone, a Smartisan Nut Pro. The customized iFlytek input method in Smartisan’s system makes voice input ridiculously convenient. I basically don’t type my annotations at all—I just say what I want to write, and the recognition is generally accurate.

The third kind is reminders about figures and tables. Duokan can’t sync figures and tables directly to Evernote, so I mark the edge of any figure or table I want to capture, reminding myself to add it when I process the notes.

Copying the Notes

After I finish a book, I open Evernote, and the “Duokan Notes” folder contains all my highlights and annotations for that book.

The next step is extremely important.

In Evernote, I create another folder called “Reading Notes,” copy the notes automatically synced from Duokan, and put the copy in this “Reading Notes” folder.

Why make a copy? Because we’re going to add all kinds of things to this version. If Duokan happens to sync again, anything I later added to the original automatically synced version will be overwritten. So I have to make a copy.

Processing the Notes: Adding the Table of Contents and Introduction

Next, I find the book’s table of contents and introduction on Douban or Amazon and paste them at the beginning of the notes.

Having the table of contents makes it much easier to grasp the structure of the whole book.

Processing the Notes: Marking the Key Points

Then I read through the copied reading notes from beginning to end. This is effectively the first review of the book, and it really helps deepen my impression of it.

As I read, I mark the key points in the notes.

I bold some terms and proper nouns; I add little headings for important material; I mark memorable lines in color; and if chapter information is missing, I add it.

Processing the Notes: Adding Figures and Tables

There’s one more job: adding figures and tables. As I mentioned, while reading I mark places with a note saying, “There should be a figure or table here.” When processing the notes, I open Duokan Reading’s web version or the EPUB file, turn to the page with the figure or table, and copy it over.

Why I Don’t Use Mind Maps

I process the notes as I go, and after one pass, the complete reading notes are done.

I don’t, like many people, turn the contents of the whole book into a tree-shaped mind map.

There are three reasons:

1. The book’s table-of-contents structure is already logically clear enough;

2. Making a mind map takes a lot of time;

3. Knowledge isn’t necessarily stored in our minds in this kind of hierarchical structure.

So personally, I think mind maps offer a pretty poor return on investment.

Reviewing the Notes

Okay, at this point the book is finished and the reading notes are done. But don’t assume that the knowledge is already in your head. A month later, you may look back at these notes and feel as if you had never read the book at all.

That’s why reviewing is so important.

At the end of each quarter, I spend some time reviewing the reading notes from the previous quarter. For example, at the end of June, I set aside some time to reread the notes I made from January through March.

This rereading can make good use of fragmented pockets of time. For example, I play the notes aloud while driving. Many phones have a TTS function—text-to-speech, which reads on-screen text aloud. On an iPhone, for example, swipe down from the very top of the screen with two fingers, and it starts reading the entire document currently on screen. With this function, I can review my notes while driving. If I miss a figure or table while listening, I can just look back at it later.

Ebook Formats: Native Ebooks

Now let’s talk about ebook formats.

The reading-and-note-taking method I described mainly applies to non-scanned ebook formats, including EPUB, text files ending in .txt, and ebooks bought from the bookstores built into apps like Duokan Reading.

All of these can be freely reflowed in a reading app according to the size of the display. They’re made for electronic reading, so you can simply use the method I described above.

Ebook Formats: Scanned PDFs

The other type of ebook—one scanned from a physical paper book—is a little more troublesome.

Scanned ebooks are most commonly saved as PDFs. A PDF of this kind is essentially a stack of images.

To make note-taking easier, we need to OCR the text in the PDF—that is, recognize the text in the images and convert it into editable text. The software with the highest OCR accuracy is called ABBYY FineReader.

Put a scanned PDF into ABBYY, and it will recognize all the text in the book.

Then I save an “exact copy.” The resulting document is still a PDF, and when you open it, the layout looks exactly the same as the original. But now you can actually select the text.

In other words, the text has been recognized.

Next, I import this PDF into Duokan Reading as usual.

Duokan Reading has a crop function that removes the blank margins around the PDF page, making the text appear larger.

For this kind of PDF, the smallest device you can really use is an iPad mini. A 10-inch iPad is ideal, and then it’s completely effortless.

Once OCR has been performed, this kind of PDF can be highlighted and annotated. Those notes can also be synced automatically to Evernote.

The only annoying part is that even ABBYY, the most accurate OCR software, still makes quite a few errors. So when you open Evernote, many of the highlighted passages contain text errors. I haven’t found a smarter way to deal with them yet; I can only correct them manually against the PDF.

The remaining steps are exactly the same as those described above.

Still, taking PDF notes this way is far more convenient than reading the paper version and then turning your notes into an electronic version. Baidu once released an app called “Book Notes,” which lets you photograph a paper book and OCR the photographed text—effectively creating highlights. But after trying it a few times, I gave up, because it seriously disrupts the rhythm of reading.

These days, when I buy a paper book that seems important and that I expect to take lots of notes on, the first thing I do after it arrives is cut it apart and turn it into a PDF myself. The paper book is then finished, and I read the PDF using the process I just described.

As for how to use some not-too-fancy tools at home to turn a physical book into a very clear PDF, I’ve worked out a few tricks myself. But they’re too fiddly to explain here. If enough people really need it, I’ll write a tutorial later.

One reminder: how you privately handle a book you bought yourself is a matter of personal freedom. But distributing its electronic version is an entirely different matter. The ebooks I make are strictly for my own reading; I’ve never distributed them.

Conclusion

That’s my experience of reading books and making reading notes, mainly on the technical side, of course. I hope it helps. And if you like it, please feel free to recommend it to your friends.