Depends on the book and if note taking is helpful or necessary for understanding or digesting the book well.

Not to mention a talking dog, an octopus conditioned to murder someone, and a guy who deals in black market chocolate cream pies.

I don’t think there’s really any kind of silver bullet for ensuring you finish every book you start and tbh if you genuinely don’t like a book there’s nothing wrong with not finishing it. That said… taking a look at that list… if you’re new to reading then trying to read everything on that list is a surefire way to burn yourself out. Ulysses, War and Peace, and Moby Dick just to name a few of the behemoths on that list… are not easy books to read and should probably be tackled individually and with some amount of prep work.

I started reading Gravity’s Rainbow around the middle of October and I’m like… maybe 65 to 70% of the way into it. That’s the book I’ve been on the longest currently. I’ve read a few other smaller/less intense books in that period.

My least favorite book I read this year was Childhood’s End by Arthur C Clarke. It wasn’t terrible, just kind of middle for me. I don’t read much science fiction and it was just an attempt to break out of my comfort zone.