I love having books to hand on my phone’s Kindle app. It allows me to read so much more than I used to when you could only get books in paper format. I’ve never kept a count of all the extra precious reading or researching minutes I’ve squeezed in while waiting to pick up the kids or between client meetings, but it must amount to weeks if not months of time.
The best part though, from a research point of view, is how simple it is to quickly highlight text then come back to it later to compile your notes. Chatting with someone else the other day, I realised that not everyone knows how to easily access your Kindle highlights on your computer, so here’s how I do it.
- On your computer, open up your Internet browser and go to https://read.amazon.com
- You’ll be prompted to log in to Amazon. Use the ID and password you use to access your Kindle books. You’ll see the covers of all the books you own on Kindle.
- Click on the notebook icon in the top left-hand corner of the screen.
- It will open up a new tab in your browser with a list of all the books you’ve annotated on the left-hand side.
- Click on the book you’re interested in and it will show you all the passages you’ve highlighted.
- If you want to quote the text in your notes, select the highlight you want to add then copy and paste it into your note management app of choice.
- If you want to go back to the original book to see your highlight in context, choose “Open in Kindle” from the “Options” menu to the right of the highlight. (You’ll need the Kindle app on your computer to do this, but it will prompt you to install it if you haven’t got it already.)
