For me, especially on a reader, what I want is a way to take the key points of a (nonfiction; fuck analyzing fiction lol) book I’m reading, then work towards boiling them down. So, as an example, I’m in the process of going back to some of my favorite psychology books and marking up all the core concepts, with the intention of eventually having an easily accessible way to reference specific studies and maybe suggest books to someone who’s interested in a digestible approach to their material. MarginNotes quickly turns text selections into a mindmap you can display different ways.

Once I’m done highlighting, I can go back and boil the text down to key points, because each box still references the original text.

I get that most people don’t handle taking notes on a text that way, but it’s why I personally haven’t used my ereaders for note taking like I wish I could.