How I Use My Kindle to Read Books

Last year, my friends, Suzanne and Brock, sent me a kindle.

To someone living and working remotely - by that I mean far from any English language bookstore - it has been an absolute godsend!

Not my hand!

I have a system when I read a scholarly book; that is, a book from which I want to take notes to refer to later.

Let me share this with you. Easy as 1-2-3.

1) While you read, highlight the important bits. Instructions from the Amazon website:

To highlight one or more lines:

1. Use the 5-way to position the cursor where you want to start highlighting.
2. Press the 5-way to anchor the cursor.
3. Move the 5-way to select the desired text. Use Next Page or Prev Pages to highlight text across multiple pages.
4. Press the 5-way at the place where you want the highlight to end.

2) After you are done reading and highlighting, turn the Kindle wireless on for 15 minutes. This will enable your highlighted passages to be automatically downloaded to your Kindle account online.

3) Go to your Kindle account online and sign in. A page like the one below should appear. Click on "Your Highlights."

 4) Using your mouse, highlight the passages from the book in question. Right click on a highlighted bit and choose "copy."

5) Paste the contents in your favorite word processor and delete the unnecessary gobbledygook. Geeks can use macros to speed this part up, however I kind of like manually reviewing my highlights and deleting superfluous passages at the same time.

6) Optional for tree huggers. Print out the saved document. With excellent books, I make a note in my calendar to review my "summaries" once a month or so.

That's all there is to it. Did I say "easy as 1-2-3"? Oops.