Even if you want to, let's say, take it easy on the annotations, they must still be your original work.

Books usually offer publisher-provided summaries to help people decide to buy them. Do not copy/paste this summary (in whole or in part) into your assignment!

Journal articles often have abstracts to help researchers decide whether it's worth reading. Do not copy/paste this abstract (in whole or in part) into your assignment!

 

What counts as original?

Simply swapping in synonyms does not create originality. There is no functional difference between "The cat is sad" and "The feline is forlorn." No real thought or effort was applied, which is the whole point of academic work. (And even non-academic work, because, yes, that would still qualify as plagiarism by most standards.)

Do not copy/paste a book summary or journal abstract and then run a thesaurus over it!

 

Think of this as if you were telling a friend about your sources. "I read this article recently. It was about ___. I thought it was interesting because ___. I wish it had talked more about ___." Then just polish it up to remove the personal pronouns and make it a little more formal and voila!