Interestingly, I have the opposite preference as a college student and avid non-fiction reader. I like reading PDFs and ebooks of texts in a window while takin

Interestingly, I have the opposite preference as a college student and avid non-fiction reader. I like reading PDFs and ebooks of texts in a window while taking notes with emacs in Org mode. I structure my notes with the chapter-section-subsection-etc. structure of the text, and in this manner, I always have a good gauge of my understanding of the text, and am more confident with jumping around to the chapters that interest me more or are more relevant. This has been so useful for me that I've started to refrain from reading long non-fiction texts that are not amenable to this structure, as I'm less likely to be able to recall and apply information learned that have not been hierarchically organized, given equal investment of time and focused effort.