When I first started college, I would write small symbols or abbreviations in the margins if certain words or phrases came up more than a couple times (a heart for dialogue about love, a scale for justice, a cloud for gloom/despair/sadness, etc). Then at various points, or just at the end of the book, I would go back and see what I had marked a lot and think about why the author kept coming back to that word/phrase/idea/theme.

In my experience, it didn’t take me out of the story in the moment since it took a couple seconds to draw, but I got better at noticing repeated phrases and ideas over time.