[shadowmatter]

I have a horrible memory when it comes to the detail of books, movies, etc. (But thankfully I can remember what I've coded, or else I'd probably be out of a job.)

I mostly read non-fiction. To improve my recall over the past 7 years, I type up notes as I read. It's made the process of reading much slower, but it has helped when I've needed to recall some example or detail or framework of a book.

I did this (selfishly) for myself, but decided to upload my notes at https://github.com/mgp/book-notes. (Shameless plug I suppose?) The README explains exactly how I take the notes – but essentially there's no shortcut. I have my text editor open and simply type notes as I read.

[arrosenberg]

Hey cool — I use a very similar practice of writing up notes in Markdown. Although I haven't published them, this is inspiring me to do so!

One thing I do differently - I read the book through first, making highlights and shorthand notes anywhere I see something interesting. I do a faster, second read-through at my computer with the Kindle annotations and the text editor side-by-side. As you said, doing it at the same time slows things down tremendously, and I found that it sapped my momentum and I got fewer books read overall. Do you experience the opposite, or is it something you learned to work through?

[yodsanklai]

Very cool! It's been a few years now that I started taking notes more systematically too. I mostly use the Notes app on Mac OS, and to a lesser extent README.md/github. Unfortunately, Notes is a bit limited compared to markdown in a specialized editor, but it's just very convenient.

So far, my notes concern mostly technical and work related stuff, but I should follow your lead and take notes for non-technical material.

[leemac]

Very cool, thanks for the link to your notes repo. I share your pain with a horrible memory. I may very well start taking notes and storing it similarly to how you've done it.