[ashark]

Commonplace-style book indexed by works you're reading. Don't really need to index further within each work, even 5-10 pages of notes per 100 pages or so isn't hard to flip through to find something, especially if you've got little drawings and such here and there to act (as a secondary function) as signposts.

Note the exact edition you've got at the beginning (so you can probably track it down again if your copy is lost/sold/destroyed/whatever) then feel free to use page numbers liberally to reference stuff you don't want to copy completely. Consider using a set format, maybe with a box around it or something, for making note of extended quotes or passages you want to refer back to in the work—something like two lines consisting of a short phrase describing it (this is just for you to recognize later, don't worry about precision or even making sense), the first few words of the quote, then a page number(s).

Use headings however they make sense to you. Chapters/sections from the book are usually all I use.

I use notebooks roughly trade paperback sized, 120-200 pages. Can usually fit a few books in each one. Keep a separate sheet or (much smaller) notebook for a global alphabetical (or whatever makes sense to you) index of the notebooks to answer "which notebook did I use for that book I read six years ago, again?" questions.

Done right you can use these, with the book itself, to do super-fast refreshers on the high points of a book. Really handy. If you want to use it for that, include very rough plot outlines and such, too, at least for fiction. Bonus: writing all that stuff helps you remember some of it unaided, too.