I've struggled a lot with being a passive reader and more often than not I tend to forget a lot of things I read. It's frustrating too when I know a book has a message between the lines, or when there are more underlying themes being presented. If you were to ask me to analyze a passage I would struggle and I feel really frustrated and dumb sometimes for it. Especially when it comes to books that have more political themes like sci-fi with social commentary, I feel like I sometimes have to be spoon fed or see what others have to say to fully understand or see the big picture.

I have tried annotating and tabbing before but sometimes my annotations feel very surface level (like literally just my reactions like "omg" or "no way" or a sad face emoji lol) or I just get too lost in the flow of reading that I don't want to take 30 seconds to write or underline something and I end up with very sparse annotations.

Are there any practical ways you guys get more out of your books beyond just reading the words on the page and vibing it out? And how do you annotate audiobooks? :(( i really want to become a more intentional reader this year !!!!

Do you count manga and gaphic novel in your yearly challenge?

I very rarely read them, but, since I wanted to continue some series of when I was a kid, I may do this year. I have decided I will count three manga volumes as 1 book, because the ones I'm interested in are fairly short, it takes me just 2 hours to finish a volume (main reason why I stopped buying them, I spent so much money on something so quick).

I had never read graphic novels before, but I got my hands on some this year, and I'm very indesicive about how I should count them. On one end, they often have as many pages as a book. On the other hand, they have very very few words. I had thought of counting two as 1 book, but I'm not sure that will do. I will read so few I might just read 2/3 in the entire year. Plus, I want all the stories I read to show up at the end of the year, and, while mangas often come in series and if I say I read Hanako-kun number 3 people would assume I read the first two as well, my graphic novels are stan alone, and I don't want to have to choose which ones should appear and which ones shouldn't.

With this post I don't want to shame anyone. If you count 1 manga volume just as much as 1 book, that's fine, same for graphic novels. That is none of my business and it is stupid to consider it cheating. in fact, I do count very short books, like 80 pages, the same as I do longer ones. The limit I set on graphic novels/manga is completely arbitrary and based on my opinion, which shouldn't influence anybody else. The challenge should be a personal stake to encourage yourself to read more than you usually would. My goal in asking this is just to take inspiration from what other people do and take a decision.