learning to be reflective about reading
Monday, 10 January 2022 12:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwariumMid-way through 2021 I started being more reflective after reading. I usually read things once and move on but I found that I barely remember what I thought about a book. I remembered whether or not I enjoyed it, and maybe some quotes because I took notes. But that was it.
A few things happened. I was giving book recs and I had to think about why I liked a book and what it was about. I was writing and thinking of things I wanted to emulate but could not, for the life of me, recall the source. And I came across Ali Abdaal’s video on “how to remember everything you read”.
(He’s like, an productivity personality and even though I don’t align with his life approach, I’ve learnt a lot from his videos (like the value of a second brain and a resonance calendar, more on that in another dreamwidth post once I figure out what works for me)).
Cue oh moment. I’ve been taking reading notes since 2010 but those were only quotes or vocab. I never reflected, summarised, or assessed. I look at my goodreads and there are just so many books I have no memory of reading. And that makes hwa stressed because I feel like that was sunk time and that I lost a part of myself ( but this is part of a wider hwa problem where I want to remember everything in my life).
Like recently, a mutual-in-law is reading if on a Winter’s Night a Traveller and I just want to yell about how much I love that book but my brain kind of fell short at why and how and what I liked about it. Sure, it’s metafiction and fun, but you can get that off the wiki. What did /I/ like about it and what were /my/ favourite parts. I want to drop in to the conversation and add something constructive but brain has lost that memory!! Why don't I remember what I read!!
For example, I have Baudrillard’s Simulacra & Simulation on my shelf right now but it sounds so dry I don’t want to pick it up. I know for a fact this is the book behind the Matrix but I also know that was not why I bought it. I wish I wrote down why. Was it quoted on literarykpop and something shook me? Did a mutual rec it? Was it cited in one of Ted Chiang’s stories? If I wrote it down I could go back after reading, back to the mutual to yell at them, or go back to the short story to reread under a new context.
Also, I want to immortalise that slice of history so I can read back and think things like “you little shit you didn’t understand Vonnegut because you were 16 and pretentious” etc etc. Also because a state of mind is unique. I could never be 16 again and think I understand Vonnegut. If I read it again now, my thoughts may be completely different.
So, I need to reflect on what I read, soon after reading.
This makes sense because of how memory is processed and stored. It’s a mix of recall and reconstruction. When you experience something, the hippocampus only holds on to vivid personal memories and starts to process them for storage in the other parts of the brain. But it’s not efficient to remember the total experience so it rewrites the memory each time you recall and interpret. In the end, you’re only left with what you need. For example, right after a holiday I can probably step through what we did each day. The first time a friend asks me “how was your holiday?”, I have to sift through my memories to make a judgment and pick out 5 or so highlights. But the next time I’m asked, I just go off my previous answer. I don’t remember the holiday. I remember it was good and that the hot springs were nice. As time passes, when I remember the holiday, I only think of the 5 memories I pulled up that first time. I don’t recall my experience, I recall my reconstruction.
Therefore, it’s important to reconstruct my memory soon after reading, while I still have the book in front of me and while the story is in my short-term memory. I might give it a few days to marinate, but if I wait too long, my memory of the book is no longer reliable. I lose the ability to make links because details fall away and I only remember a weak, flimsy reconstruction of my first (uncritical) impression that’s probably mixed with stuff I read online and other people’s reviews. Like, I might recall a book is good, and then later read a mutual saying they loved the book because of the triangulation dynamics, and the brain (because it confabulates), will go, okay, you liked this book because of the dynamics. But that may not have been my original thought at the time of reading! (Haha, now that I write it out, it’s similar to interviewing eyewitnesses after a crime and preventing the formation of false memories. Btw, I learnt all this from Diving for Seahorses — highly recommend for anyone interested in how memory works)
Going forward, I’m trying to find a balance between “write as many notes as you can hwa” and “low expectations are sustainable hwa” :’D If I write 4.4k each time like I did for Left Hand of Darkness ….. there will be no book notes.
So! At a minimum, I want to write down:
- why I read the book and how it got to me (who recced it, why I chose it)
- where I read it (because remembering places helps with recall, method of loci!!)
- summary (if someone asked me what the book was about, this is what I would say)
- who should read it
- my impressions (with brief reasoning. this has the benefit of not needing to enunciate reasons years later because I’ve already written it out once and now I can just copy+paste+hijack. I am also immensely disappointed I didn’t write my Poppy War/Burning God hate post right after reading when I was filled with rage. I know that if I have to do my feelings justice I have to read the book again and I am… not ready.)
- what I want to try in my own writing (very important! this will link to my resonance calendar)
- a resonance calendar is a repository of stuff I keep coming back to. Something that hits you in a different way. You don't even have to actively recall it, it just pops up in your memory randomly. I want to write it down in one place so I don't have to wait for the spontaneous recall. The memory never comes when you sit down to be creative haha. I'm still working on one! coming soon to dreamwidth!
Ta da! More book notes coming 2022 to hwarium @ dreamwidth. I’ll be curious to hear how mutuals process and think about the books they’ve read. If there’s other things you will note down or what programs you use to store notes or if you have a system n___n Also want to make a book club on dreamwidth but let’s think about that after 17hols HAHA.
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Date: 10 January 2022 04:14 am (UTC)really looking forward to your thoughts on Ali Abdaal later! what were you thinking for how to construct these things? and also ty for sharing on memory~
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Date: 10 January 2022 06:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 10 January 2022 02:11 pm (UTC)++ when I write, I realise what I need, and that feed backs into how I take notes. Curious to see how my notes will change throughout the next year, just the little mental switch to be consciously reflective did a lot *__*
Keen to see your monthly roundups next time then!! For the resonance calendar, I considered using notion but I really don't trust technology haha (especially after the curious cat blackout). I still much prefer the comfort of handwriting, even if that means the data is not searchable. But now I have a mix of hard and soft notes (e.g. kindle highlights and goodreads stats)
Short term plan is to do rec lists (all time fic recs, yearly book sweeps) that acts both as a sharing platform and as a personal index, so that I at least know the notes exist somewhere!
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Date: 10 January 2022 02:18 pm (UTC)Yes!! The more I create, the more my notes change. They become less passive because I have an idea of what I'm using them for. (where do you... keep your... thoughts on fandom conversation"... just asking... haha. Anyway! Yes exactly!! My next stage of note-taking is synthesis and links, something that is unique to each person is what each piece reminds them of. Kind of like, when scissorghosting put out their soonhao bodyswap fic, I immediately thought of klavier's soonhao bodyswap. I loved them both, and they were different in delicious ways that I just wanted to talk about. Like how parts were similar because of the nature of /soonyoung/, but each piece spoke to a different theme and thus, different characterisations. To be honest, the etiquette feels a bit grey because even though it's not criticism, it's /critical/. Penny for your thoughts?)
Last, yes absolutely plot and character points. Things that you can steal from other stories, cannibalise, and turn into your own
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Date: 10 January 2022 08:17 pm (UTC)I do definitely also have feelings about what is appropriate re: litcrit applications of fanfiction. It's a huge part of ongoing discussions we have about the pod! When is it appropriate to be critical? What are the power dynamics at play? How do we go about intuiting consent to treat someone's work of fanfiction as a literary work and apply our various academic lenses to it? Maybe because I'm fandom older than most I see in kpop fandom, but I tend to err towards "if I can prove that I'm coming from a genuinely kind place, then talking about something impacted me doesn't always have to be a purely positive experience", but then again we're also very gentle on the pod because we don't know most of the authors we discuss. My nightmare is being like "this was not good" and crushing some 15 year old's dreams, you know, and also there are plenty of media franchises (podcasts ,youtube channels) dedicated to roundly mocking fanfic and we wanted nothing to do with that.
God, I'm long-winded. What I'm trying to say is that as an author at least, I love it when people take what I've written seriously. I love knowing what worked and what didn't and why, if people can find the words to articulate that. But I'm someone who is actively working on craft and pushing to be better, and that's not everyone's game with fic, nor does it have ot be. I tend to avoid negative value judgments when I'm talking/thinking about a work, but I treat "where does this fit into the broader fandom convo" as fair game, because I think we are all always in conversation with each other. Just yesterday a friend asked me if I thought my latest fic had been impacted by the characterization in a longfic we'd both read, and it was cool to stop and think about it.
I really want to write more process notes in 2022! And for me that totally includes citing influences and talking about my place in various fandoms (or what I imagine it to be) and how that colors what I write. So I'm hoping that that will give me some more insight too on how I tend to process and frame and deliver words. So much to think about all the time!!
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Date: 11 January 2022 11:02 pm (UTC)that's true! the balance between freedom of expression and understanding that fandom is a gift economy. And yeah, when I heard my fic being discussed it was a goddamn highlight of my decade+ fandom career, I've never felt so high in my life haha. Agree- value judgements are a no, but explaining how you felt and why you felt that way is ultimately so fun to read even if you don't agree, I'll take that forward if I end up writing meta on fic this year. Yes!! so much to think about
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Date: 13 January 2022 09:00 pm (UTC)I've considered notion for some things before too, but it's kind of intimidating in its flexibility! maybe for later? I'm looking forward to wherever your indexing takes you!!
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Date: 13 January 2022 09:37 pm (UTC)