I Need A Plan...So I Plan to Check Out Musing Monday.

So, let's see what this weeks question is from the ever curious Just One More Page!

Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about note taking…

Do you take notes while reading – either for your reviews or for yourself? How/where do you make these notes (on the page, post-its, scrap paper, notebooks etc)?

I will admit it. I am a bad book reviewer.

I don't mean that the result is bad...I leave that to you, my dear readers, to decide. Maybe yes, maybe no. No, I mean I am very bad at actually going about it. I have no system.

Really, I have been doing this for awhile now, certainly over a year now and I have written a goodly number of reviews, so one would think that I would have it down pat, but I do not. Which may also explain why I have a small pile of books, sitting in my view, waiting to be reviewed. Now that pile is not to be confused with the pile of ARCs to be read. Or the pile of library books to be read. Or the much larger pile of the general To Be Read pile.

I know that there should never be, for me, a pile to be reviewed, because I MUST write the review while the book is fairly fresh in my mind. Not immediately..it needs to ferment overnight or an afternoon maybe. But I know if I finish a book, put it down and start another book, I am in trouble. My wee mind will soon be full of the new book and it will just take me that much longer to get back to what I felt, what I wanted to say, about the review book. So, sometime it joins The Pile Granted, this is where notes might come in. So, what about notes. Do I take notes and if so, do they help?

Well, here again I have not really found a system that works for me all the time.
I do not write in books.
That is just evil.
A notebook would seem too much like work. And work is always to be avoided.(don't mention that to my boss, ok?)
On occasion, I have used regular sized post-it notes to write some ideas down and stuck them in the book near a quote that it refers to, but that has problems. First, my handwriting is awful. Often I have no idea what the note says when I go back to read it. Second, I hate to pause to find the post-it, the pen, actually write the note. I know, I should be better organized, but I am not and have come to peace with that. So now, I usually stick one of those wee post-its or those arrow-like post-its pointing to what I think is an important point in the book. I love the cute dispensers and I got a big pack of them at Sam's Club, so I can stash some all over the place. Then, before I start to write the review, I go back and look at all the things that I have 'highlighted'.

About half of them usually make sense to me. I study the rest, trying to figure out why in the world I thought that was important.
Then I lay down and take a nap.
Perhaps you now see my reviewing problem.

I really need to get a better system.... ;-)