I'm using Anki with books too. Right now I just highlight the contents of books which I found interesting. And after reading the books I will export the highlights to Anki. It's better than nothing. But I think there's more to say about how to make Anki cards with these highlights.
Thank you for the reference. I just stumbled into this website and found the essays interesting to me. As a Chinese reader there is not so many this kind of contents in chinese web. Really lucky to enjoy the thought while improving my English.
The essay reminds me of the book 𝑳𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒖𝒂𝒈𝒆 𝒐𝒏 𝑻𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑨𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 by Samuel Hayakawa. The author also used the map and territory metaphor in the book.
To be honest, as a Chinese person, your method of learning Chinese characters seems more reasonable and effective. When I taught children how to learn Chinese characters, I simply bought a Chinese character book. Each page of the book had several large characters, and there was a picture next to each character to indicate its meaning. By continuously reading aloud to the children and letting them understand the meaning through the pictures, eventually, the children were able to recognize these characters. My method can be effective, I believe it is largely due to the language environment that the children have.