2LynnB
>1 hazzabullman: Sounds like a good system. I rely on notes....which I have to write carefully or else they are less comprehensible over time.
3paradoxosalpha
My process is to take notes on things that interest me as I go; I keep these notes in the LT Private Comments field.
When I finish the book, I write a review that summarizes its central purport, discusses its sources and organizational features, and notes anything else I found especially illuminating. I post that in the LT Review field for the benefit of others and my own future reference.
>1 hazzabullman:, the fact that you have just joined LibraryThing in order to post on this topic makes me wonder whether your whole purpose in being here is to shill for the product you mention. If so, your post will soon be flagged out of visibility.
When I finish the book, I write a review that summarizes its central purport, discusses its sources and organizational features, and notes anything else I found especially illuminating. I post that in the LT Review field for the benefit of others and my own future reference.
>1 hazzabullman:, the fact that you have just joined LibraryThing in order to post on this topic makes me wonder whether your whole purpose in being here is to shill for the product you mention. If so, your post will soon be flagged out of visibility.
4jjwilson61
>3 paradoxosalpha: I think you're right. They say "I continue to use LibraryThing for what it does best..." but they have no books in their catalog.
I'm betting that they used a chatbot to write their plug "as if I were a longtime LibraryThing user".
I'm betting that they used a chatbot to write their plug "as if I were a longtime LibraryThing user".
5SandraArdnas
>1 hazzabullman: I couldn't find Booksmarts in a quick internet search, so can't compare, but Anki is a free and open source app for making your own customized flash cards for spaced repetition. My e-reader app can even connect to it automatically when I highlight the text, so you can create them as you go.
I use Anki only for Spanish learning. Reading I track in Obsidian, with each book having a note of its own with anything I might want to write down or quote. This can then be interlinked with other notes, like a personal wiki, as well as filtered and searched across all notes in various ways. Eg I can filter my quotes by author, a specific book, tags I assigned to the quote etc. I love it. It doesn't support spaced repetition out of the box, but there are several community plugins to do it from your notes, some within Obsidan, others by making the flash cards in Anki in a similar way.
A picture is worth a thousand words, so here's a portion of my note on Gandhi: A Very Short Introduction.
The portions in green and underlined are links to other notes and if I open them, they show all the backlinks, ie notes that link to it.
And here's a card view made for my 2025 reading
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Obsidian team, besides it's a free app. I'm just enthusiastic since I came across it and it keeps getting better as they develop it. This card view was possible before, but it required plugins and tutorials how to code it and I never bothered. Now it's native user-friendly feature that took me half a minute to set up.
I use Anki only for Spanish learning. Reading I track in Obsidian, with each book having a note of its own with anything I might want to write down or quote. This can then be interlinked with other notes, like a personal wiki, as well as filtered and searched across all notes in various ways. Eg I can filter my quotes by author, a specific book, tags I assigned to the quote etc. I love it. It doesn't support spaced repetition out of the box, but there are several community plugins to do it from your notes, some within Obsidan, others by making the flash cards in Anki in a similar way.
A picture is worth a thousand words, so here's a portion of my note on Gandhi: A Very Short Introduction.
The portions in green and underlined are links to other notes and if I open them, they show all the backlinks, ie notes that link to it.
And here's a card view made for my 2025 reading
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Obsidian team, besides it's a free app. I'm just enthusiastic since I came across it and it keeps getting better as they develop it. This card view was possible before, but it required plugins and tutorials how to code it and I never bothered. Now it's native user-friendly feature that took me half a minute to set up.
