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I finally learned to stop over-annotating my books for book club
I used to highlight and tab every single thing I thought was important in my book club books... you know, character names, symbols, themes. But last month I spent like 8 hours prepping for our discussion on this one novel, and when I got to the meeting nobody cared about my deep symbolism breakdown. They all just wanted to talk about whether the ending made them mad or not. So now I limit myself to three tabs per chapter max and mostly just write down my gut reactions in the margins. It took me a solid year and five failed book club meetings to figure out that less is way more when you're trying to actually talk about a book with other people. Anyone else ever kill their own enjoyment of reading by turning it into homework?
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caseythompson10d ago
Wait did your book club even notice you stopped over-annotating? I had a friend who used to color code her books with like five different highlighters and sticky tabs everywhere... she'd bring this giant annotated copy to our meetings and spend twenty minutes explaining her system. Then one time she realized nobody else even brought the book, they were just going off their memory of the audiobook. She still laughs about it but I think it lowkey broke her heart. It's way more fun to just scribble "this dude is so annoying" in the margins and call it a day.
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umar4910d ago
I mean, is it really that deep though? People put so much pressure on themselves with the whole annotation thing, it's a book club not a thesis defense. If she's having fun with it and nobody's complaining, I don't see the big deal either way.
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