know.

CookbookBooks and writingNo. 6

A commonplace booka lifetime of reading notes, filed by theme

Recipe No. 6Books and writing

For
A reader who wants to remember what they read and see how the books connect
You bring
The book you are reading now, your e-reader’s highlights or a pencilled copy, and whatever notes survive from the books before it
You get
A private commonplace book: a document per book with its passages and your thoughts, a document per theme that gathers them across books, and quizzes that bring the best of it back
Time
Ten minutes when you finish a reading session, and half an hour when you finish a book
Works in
know.sh on the web · your AI assistant, through MCP
Keep it
Private. This one never goes on a public link.

Readers have kept commonplace books for centuries: a notebook of passages worth keeping, copied out by hand and arranged under headings, so that what you read becomes something you can think with. Most modern reading notes fail at the second half. The highlights sit in an e-reader, sorted by book, and the connection between a line in Thoreau and a line in George Eliot lives only in your head, until it doesn’t.

This recipe keeps the whole habit and hands the copying to your assistant, whichever one you use. Give it the passages you marked and it files a document per book, a finding per passage with its page, and a blank line under each for you. In the editor you write that line, and your own ideas. Each theme you keep returning to, attention, work, cities, gets a document of its own, written in your words and linked to the passages behind it. Your assistant reads across the lot and finds the echoes you had forgotten, and writes quizzes on your own notes that bring a book back three weeks after you finished it.

It stays private, because it is full of other people’s sentences. What you make of them is yours.

What you will use

Shelf
Two shelves: Books, with a document per book, and Themes, with a document per idea you keep returning to.
Research document
A book’s document holds your passages and thoughts; its overview, written when you finish, says what the book was to you.
Finding
A passage as Evidence, with the page; an idea of your own as Insight; something you argue with as Question.
Your AI assistant
Files the passages you marked, finds echoes across books, links theme documents to their passages, and writes quizzes on your notes.
The editor
Where you write why each passage stopped you, cut the ones that no longer matter, and write your theme documents.
Highlights
On rereading, highlight the line that still matters; its number turns bold in the index and Revisit notices when you leave it alone.
Proposed notes
When your assistant spots an echo, it leaves a proposed note naming the other book, with Accept and Dismiss.
Quiz
Questions on your own notes, not the book’s plot, that come back under Revisit after three days, a week or three weeks.

Method

  1. 1

    Have your assistant set up the two shelves

    Ask your assistant to make a shelf called Books, “One document per book, passages and my thoughts”, and another called Themes: “What I keep thinking about, across books.” The first holds what you read; the second, what you made of it.

    Each book’s document is titled with its title, author and year of first publication, “Walden — Henry David Thoreau, 1854”, so Look up finds a book by its author as well as its title. You write the overview yourself when you finish: when you read it, which edition, and a paragraph on what it was to you.

  2. 2

    Hand over the passages you marked

    When you finish a reading session or a book, give your assistant the passages you marked: the highlights your e-reader lets you copy out, or photographs of the pencilled pages. Ask it to file each as a finding in the book’s document, as Evidence, the passage as a short quotation with the page and edition, and a line “Why it stopped me:” left empty.

    Have it title each passage in a few words of its idea rather than the first words of the quote, “Living deliberately”, because titles are what you scan in Look up. It should copy, never paraphrase: a commonplace book is only as good as its quotations are exact.

  3. 3

    Write your own line under each passage

    Open the book’s document and press Edit. Under each passage, write one or two lines of your own on why it stopped you. Delete the passages that no longer seem worth keeping; the assistant filed what you marked, and marking is generous. Add your own ideas as Insight findings, and anything you argue with as a Question.

    This is the part of the habit that makes it yours. A commonplace book of quotations without your lines is someone else’s anthology.

  4. 4

    Highlight when you reread

    A week after you finish a book, read your own notes on it once, start to finish. Select the lines that still matter and choose Highlight. The number of each highlighted finding turns bold in the index, so the passages you rated twice are the ones you find first.

    Open at on the title page takes you back to your latest highlight, and Revisit points out a document whose highlights you have left alone for a month.

  5. 5

    Ask your assistant to find the echoes

    This is what a paper commonplace book could never do. Ask your assistant: “Using know.sh, what have I noted about attention, across the books on my Books shelf?” It reads your passages and thoughts, groups what they claim, and cites each finding, so you can check its reading against your own.

    You can also ask it to watch for echoes: name a passage and ask it to find passages in other books that echo or contradict it, and leave a proposed note for each. Accept the ones that are real; dismiss the ones that are a stretch.

  6. 6

    Write the theme documents yourself

    When a theme keeps turning up, ask your assistant to make a document for it on Themes, “On attention”, and to gather links to the passages behind it; hovering over a link shows the passage without leaving the page. Then write the document in the editor: an overview that is your own short essay on the subject, and a finding per idea, as Insight.

    The gathering is the assistant’s work, but the ideas are yours to write: a theme document built from summaries teaches you nothing.

  7. 7

    Quiz yourself on your own notes

    When you finish a book, ask your assistant for a quiz on its document. It writes five to ten questions with know.sh’s quiz tools, each citing the findings it came from; ask it to test your ideas and which passage led to which, not the plot. Take it in know.sh, or on the iOS app, which is in TestFlight beta.

    A finished quiz comes back under Revisit: in three days if you scored under 60 per cent, a week at 60 or more, three weeks at 80 or more. Star the books you return to every year, and put the one you are reading in Focus for its week.

Specimen

QuizzesWalden — Henry David Thoreau, 1854Question 3 of 8

In your notes on “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”, what did Thoreau say he went to the woods to do?

  1. aTo write a book about the seasons
  2. bTo live deliberately
  3. cTo avoid paying his taxes
  4. dTo study the pond through one winter

The answer is (b). “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” You filed it as a passage and wrote that it reads better as a question than as an answer. See Walden, 4.

A question the reader’s assistant wrote from their own notes, taken in know.sh. A wrong answer points back to the finding it came from.

The index, A–Z

AureliusWalden

A

Aurelius

Meditations — Marcus Aurelius, c. 170–180, 1, 3, 6

On attention, 4

D

Dorothea

Middlemarch — George Eliot, 1871–72, 2, 3, 9

E

Eliot

Middlemarch — George Eliot, 1871–72, 1, 3, 12

On attention, 2

M

Meditations — Marcus Aurelius, c. 170–180, 1–6

Middlemarch — George Eliot, 1871–72, 1–12

T

Thoreau

Walden — Henry David Thoreau, 1854, 1, 4, 7

On attention, 2, 3

W

Walden — Henry David Thoreau, 1854, 1–8

The shelf’s index gathers the authors, characters and books that recur; for ideas such as attention, use Look up. Bold numbers are passages you highlighted.

  1. You

    Using know.sh, search my Books shelf for passages about attention and list them with their books.

  2. A local model through Ollama

    I found four:

    • Walden, 4: “Living deliberately”, filed with your line that it reads better as a question than an answer.
    • Middlemarch, 3: “Dorothea’s short-sightedness”, on what she fails to notice.
    • Middlemarch, 9: “The roar on the other side of silence”.
    • Meditations, 4: “Attend to what is before you”.

    Your line on Middlemarch, 3 says the opposite of your line on Walden, 4. Shall I read both in full?

    From your library

    1. Walden, 4: Living deliberately
    2. Middlemarch, 3: Dorothea’s short-sightedness
    3. Meditations, 4: Attend to what is before you
A local model doing something modest and useful: searching the library and reading back what you filed, with the findings it came from.

Prompts to try

  1. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model)

    Using know.sh, add the passages I have given you to the document “Middlemarch — George Eliot, 1871–72” on my Books shelf as Evidence findings. Title each with its idea in five words or fewer, put the passage as a quotation copied exactly, with its chapter and page, and end with a line “Why it stopped me:” left empty for me to fill in.

  2. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model)

    Using know.sh, which passages on my Books shelf are about attention or distraction? Group them by what they claim, quote a line from each with its book and finding number, and tell me where two books disagree.

  3. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model)

    Using know.sh, read finding 4 of “Walden — Henry David Thoreau, 1854” on my Books shelf. Find passages in my other books that echo or contradict it, and for each one leave a proposed note on that finding naming the book and finding. Do not change any text.

  4. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model)

    Using know.sh, write a quiz on the document “Walden — Henry David Thoreau, 1854” on my Books shelf about my notes, not the book’s plot: which idea came from which passage, and what I said I disagreed with. Use typed answers only for single words or names, and cite the findings each question comes from.

Variations

  • Reading for a degree or a paper? The literature review recipe adds the discipline of checking every source.
  • Keep a shelf per year instead of one Books shelf, and make January’s job reading the index of the year before.
  • Read one author whole: a document per essay of Montaigne or per letter of Seneca, and a theme document for each idea that runs through them.
  • Reading in another language? Pair this with a language notebook for the words and constructions you meet.

Where it falls short

  • Nothing comes in from an e-reader or a reading app automatically. Your assistant files what you give it; know.sh itself has no import.
  • No photographs of pages or covers in the library. Your assistant can read a photographed page, but know.sh keeps the words; the page number and edition are your way back to the book.
  • Your assistant writes the quizzes and there is no quiz editor. If a question tests a detail you do not care about, ask it to replace the question. Smaller local models call tools less reliably, so check what they write.
  • Revisit brings a quiz back on a fixed 3, 7 or 21-day rule. It is not spaced repetition and it will not grade how well you remembered.

A note on quoting other people’s books

Indexed under

Commonplace booksReading notesQuotationsThemesConnections across booksRevisit

See also