My writing, as well as many of the other creative things I do, are inspired by the many books I read, both fiction and non-fiction. I take extensive handwritten notes on all the non-fiction books, and later transcribe them to Evernote. Here I want to share these notes with you.
They are a combination of quotes, summaries, and my own thoughts. As such, they are highly biased, and probably depend a lot on what I was focusing on, or what projects I was working on, while reading a book. I also don’t guarantee that all the quotes are correct and free of typos. I recommend you refer to the original book. These notes are meant as a reference, short summary, and source of quotes. They are not reviews.
I use a few shorthands at the beginning of lines which you can use to do quick searches for specific content:
[bq] stands for “book quote”. This is a section that is directly from the book.
[q] stands for “quote”. This is a quote that the author also used in the book. It is followed by the original attribution.
[NFW] stands for “note for writing”. These are random thoughts that came to me in relation to something in the book that I might want to use later in an article
While I tend to read about one book every two weeks or so, my transcription of the notes is often far slower and infrequent. I post notes here whenever I feel like transcribing a particular book, not when I actually read it.