#1

Morning all, I’m interested in seeing the process people are using to collect notes from the books that they’re reading.

My issue is that I prefer listening to Audiobooks. If I’m at home, I can make notes while I’m listening and if I’m out … well I can listening while I’m on the go.

My problem though is that Audio books are so hard to take notes from or highlight quotes in. I’ve been a Readwise user for a little while now to try to help with this, but I find myself with what feels like a convoluted work flow if I find something I want to make a note of while I’m out.

Typically I’ll dictate the quote/highlight into Drafts, then when I get home I’ll search for that quote in the digital version of the book and highlight it so that Readwise picks it up. From there, I can export it into Obsidian.

It’s not the end of the world, but it just feels awkward and also means I have to have a digital version of every book that I want (as well as the audio version).

It feels like I should be giving up audio books while I’m out or forgetting about highlighting specific quotes (and therefore giving up Readwise).

So speak to me, wise community - how are you guys doing it?

4 Likes
#2

Hi,
I have most of my books as audio and as an e-book on Kindle. When I listen to a book and want to remember a passage or quote, I open the Kindle app on my iPhone, highlight the quote & write a note. This syncs then via Readwise as you know.
Maybe not the best workflow but it works very well for me.
Readwise can also give you the most common highlights for your audiobooks but that might not match what you would like to highlight. So I don’t use this very often.
Hope that is a bit useful!
Christine

#3

You can post to Readwise from Drafts directly without finding the highlight:

3 Likes
#4

I am thinking about this for a while too. IMO, taking text notes is not practical in this case. there is an app that I found that can bookmark them. The one I found is still a bit user-hard to work with. I like to add bookmark to it by pressing a button, like how buttons on headphones work for playing and pausing it. later at home one can turn that into text and add it to obsidian/

#5

Thanks a lot for this @derekvan - I missed this and it looks really interesting

#6

Yeah, I’m not sure about that particular action but it shows how to use the API in drafts. I’ve made a few custom actions for myself. Sometime though the API is wonky and I’ve found it easier just to have drafts make a CSV to import into Readwise manually.

1 Like
#7

I’m sorry I’m new to this Drafts app, after reading the link you posted above, I still can not get the hang of what that plugin does, what is the exact workflow of this plugin I wonder? Thanks!