E-reader Note Taking Novels & Stories

“Stress doesn’t need a reason, Nicole. It just finds you.” I shook my head, smiling. “You’re impossible. I swear you make life sound so dramatic sometimes.” He laughed softly. “Maybe I just like to complain. Makes me feel human.” We sat in comfortable silence for a few moments, watching the sunlight stretch across the shelves. Then I noticed his notebook. “What are you working on now? More notes for class?” He held it up, flipping to a page full of scribbles. “Yeah… notes, sketches, reminders. Basically a mess. I write down everything so I don’t forget, kind of my survival tactic.”

My eyes traced the same page again and again. The girl sitting across from me flipped through six pages in the time it took me to understand one definition. My jaw tightened. I reached for my phone. My thumb hovered over one app before pressing it. The screen opened immediately. Simple and clean with no bright colors, no unnecessary buttons. Exactly the way Raphael had designed it. The app read every paragraph aloud while highlighting each word one at a time. The font automatically changed into one my brain found easier to process. Long paragraphs broke themselves into smaller pieces. Important concepts appeared as diagrams instead of walls of text.

“I don’t know why you insist on taking notes with a pen and paper when we have perfectly good laptops you could use.” I hand him the notes that—despite the distractions—are immaculate, each page filled with neatly written points and key takeaways. “And miss using all those shorthand classes I took? Plus, I’m a firm believer that writing notes by hand helps retain information and focus.” He arches an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Alright, now what’s the real reason for torturing yourself during meetings?” “Optics. They don’t ask me questions if they think I’m too busy taking your notes.” I grin and cross one leg over the other.

Maybe even use it as blackmail if she ever messes with me again. "Anyway..."The sweet moment is short lived as Amanda clicks on a tab on her page, a Powerpoint presentation flashing across the screen with a bunch of bullet points on. "Do you know how to make powerpoint presentation notes?" "Um..." "Good," She doesn't allow me to answer as she proceeded to instruct me on what to do. "I want you to type for me some of these notes I drafted on my notepad." And proceeded to produce the said yellow notepad with dog ears under each written page , sprinkled with over a thousand notes inside it. I snatched the notepad from her and perused over the pages , my eyes increasing in size with each page tu

“Yeah, this is a lousy textbook.” I set the book aside and glance at his notes. Though there aren’t many, Rob’s jotted them in large, clearly formed letters, evenly spaced along the lines and with wide spaces between each word and group of words. A few misspellings catch my eye, and in one of these, one of the letters is reversed. Finally, I glance at the book program on his computer. Sliding the laptop to me, I check the settings, and, finding what I want, make some adjustments to the way the digital text is presented on the page. “Is that easier to read?”

Not as a formal addition to a case file. As a margin note. In the first year. In the first case file. Where the first reader of the archive will find it. She looked at what she had written. She wrote: The note will say: this is what it is all for. Name it. Before you read further, name what you think this is all for. Then read. Then come back and see if your name was right. She looked at it. She thought: that is a good margin note. She thought: that is the kind of margin note that will be found by the right reader.

The annotations in the margin, the pen moving when something merits notation, the small precise handwriting that Elijah has learned to read even when it's cramped into the margins of a page that was not designed to accommodate it. He has been doing this in this kitchen for years, at this island, on this stool, with this cup of coffee to his left. The reading and the annotation are the first act of his day, the calibration before anything else. They are how he orients himself to the world, how he reminds himself of what matters and what doesn't, how he prepares for the meetings and the decisions and the conversations that will follow.

I smiled at her. "Finished." Emerson dropped his notebook onto the table in front of me. It landed with a slap. I picked it up and started reading through it. Then I picked up my red pen. "What are you doing?" he said. I kept marking. Corrections in the margin, circled errors, notes beside the questions he'd clearly rushed. "I am marking it." I turned the page. "Same as any teacher would." He leaned forward. "You're marking it up more than any teacher would."

"... Ah. Maybe I haven't noticed your presence. I was really spaced out. Sorry." Mace just smiled at her sweetly and took out a black notebook. It has wide pages and it was designed for goths. The sheets were colored into black so it's kind of odd to write them down because the written phrases can't be seen in the eyes because of their pigment. It's like writing for nothing, but this kind of note can be helpful too. Writing down your secrets is possible and safe, the only way to read all the writings is to let luminous shine upon it.

I straightened it, and a loose slip of paper slid out, fluttering down to land by my shoe. I picked it up. It wasn't scrap paper. It was a page torn from a legal pad, tucked inside the book, covered in notes written in the margins. They weren't just highlights or underlines; they were full responses. Short arguments. A final question written in a neat, dark handwriting. I read the lines slowly. "Damn," I whispered to myself. "This is actually good." The notes talked straight back to the text with sharp points, pushing the ideas further than the author had. Then I noticed faded pencil marks mixed in beneath the ink. It was my own handwriting from three weeks ago, back when I had checked this