Book Notes
A structured reading log. Capture key ideas, favorite passages, and personal takeaways from any book.
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About this tool
I have a shelf of books I remember loving and can barely describe. I know they changed me, I can feel it, but I cannot reconstruct the argument, find the specific passage, or explain what I took from them to someone who asks. For a long time I assumed this was a memory problem. It is not. It is a note-taking problem. Reading without writing is like filling a bucket with a hole in it.
I built this tool after sitting with Mortimer Adler's argument that you don't truly own a book until you've engaged with it actively. The structure here captures four things worth saving: what the book argues, the specific passages worth rereading, what you personally take away, and whether you would recommend it. The distinction between key ideas and personal takeaways is deliberate. Only the second one actually changes your behavior.
Frequently asked questions
There is no hard limit; you can save notes for as many books as your browser's localStorage allows, which is typically 5-10 megabytes. For most readers, that is several hundred books of notes before hitting any constraint. Books are listed in reverse order of when they were last saved, so your most recent notes appear at the top. To view an older book, scroll down the saved books list.
Yes, click "Export as text" to download your notes as a .txt file named after the book. The file includes the title, author, rating, and all four note sections as plain text. You can open it in any text editor, paste it into a notes app like Obsidian or Notion, or email it to yourself. This is the recommended backup method; if you clear your browser data, the localStorage copy will be lost.
Key Ideas captures the author's arguments and insights: what the book claims, what evidence it offers, what its central thesis is. Personal Takeaways captures your response: what you will do differently, what changed how you see something, what you want to explore further. The distinction matters because most people conflate the two. Understanding an idea is not the same as being changed by it. The Takeaways section is where change lives.
Completely. All book notes are stored in your browser's localStorage under the key "lt_book_notes". Nothing is sent to a server, associated with an account, or visible to anyone other than you on your device. Your reading list is not shared, aggregated, or analyzed in any way. The tool functions entirely client-side; no data leaves your browser at any point.
Clearing browser data or cookies will erase your localStorage, including all book notes. Export any notes you want to keep before clearing. If you use multiple devices, notes are stored independently on each; they don't sync. For a permanent reading library, export your notes after each book and store them in a folder in Obsidian, Notion, or a simple documents folder.