This is what I use evernote for. I create notes about chapters in my own words, and it's fun to go back and revisit them. I found this was the only way for me to absorb any juice from these books. And for technical books, I use sticker arrow markers that point to the specific parts on the pages, and this makes it easier to just flip pages and jump to sections.
Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?
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Re: Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?
#32Direct link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/books/review/Collins-t.htm... (IMHO this post adds very ltitle) The poster is quite skeptical that books change us. I don't understand why because the truth is this (IMHO) is blatantly self-evident. Even our machine learning models are capable of taking inputs and changing the internal structure creating or modifying the ability to make inferences. Why do you think our b…
>particularly receptive to the meme of fiction Actually, our minds and memories are particularly receptive to narrative . Which can also result in problems, both the narrative fallacy ("Our need to fit a story or pattern to a series of connected or disconnected facts" which leads us to overvalue "facts" embedded in a story format) and undervaluing of statistical and other numerical data.
Of course all narratives have a whiff of fiction about them by dint of giving thrust and bearing to what are otherwise inert facts. It doesn't much matter whether we're talking about a sci-fi novel, a political speech, a research report or a simple slogan. As Chaïm Perelman put it:
"The study of argumentation compels us to take into account not only the choice of data but also the way in which they are interpreted, the meaning attributed to them. It is to the extent that it constitutes a conscious or unconscious choice between several modes of meaning, that the interpretation can be distinguished from the data being interpreted, and can be opposed to them. . . . It is precisely when incompatible interpretations make us hesitate as to how we are to conceive the datum that the problem of interpretation is very important." -- Treatise on Argumentation
Re: Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?
#33I don't remember much about Moby Dick.
a. "Call me Ishmael" = The First Three Words b. Queequeg's Coffin = The Last Bit. c. there was a chapter called Cetology. d. Ambergris is (I think) Whale Sperm, e. At some point in the novel, I'm PRETTY sure someone puts on a whale penis and runs around. They're huge, whale penii, like 6 feet, easy.
That's about it, and I'm sure Herman Melville (I guess I remember that too) would be a little irked, but...
...if I had an idea, tomorrow, to write a book about an old guy chasing after a whale, I'd stop myself.
My point is, that one of the -other- benefits of having a breadth of knowledge, is that it helps prevent unintentional derivativeness and mimicry.
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Also, this author also assumes that the only worthwhile knowledge is that which can be recalled consciously at will.
Personally, I find that knowledge is a lot like any artist's artistic vocabulary. You consume and consume and consume, and then at some point you start creating, and what you end up making is the conscious and unconscious combination of all of the things you've seen/heard/read before.
The guitarist doesn't realize it's his love of The Beatles and Dr. Dre that's creating that work, but it is.
Those are just two things off of the top of my head. And by that, I mean these are two ideas that are undoubtedly the distillation of ideas I've heard/read elsewhere. Like maybe "On Writing" by Stephen King.
(The Above Idea about the distillation of ideas is likely the distillation of a speech from a great movie, which I'm sure I can find...)
"You come into a bar, you read some obscure passage, and then pretend you, you..pawn it off as your own..as your own idea just to impress some girls..?" - Good Will Hunting (1997)
And by "girls" he means "Hacker News."
(Try not to make that substitution too liberally however, or you'll be sorely disappointed when you walk into the "Live Hacker News! Hacker News Hacker News!" bar.)
Re: Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?
#34I'd like to comment on this blog post but unfortunately I cannot remember anything the author wrote. I wonder why he did that.
Taking notes about things you read is good academic pratcice for ... a few hundreds? years.
Re: Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?
#35I have trouble remembering book plots too (except in broad strokes). But what I find I do remember is a particular line here and there, something that sticks with me because it's just so well-put, or because it crystallizes something that was already in my head in some form. I can forget everything else about a book, but years later I'll still have a line kicking around in my head, word-for-word, because it just reso…
Speaking of "Weird", I don't think your attachment to particular lines or phrases is unusual at all. For example, high up my list of text which is burned into my memory is the opening of Espedair Street by Iain Banks:
"Two days ago I decided to kill myself. I would walk and hitch and sail away from this dark city to the bright spaces of the wet west coast, and there throw myself into the tall, glittering seas beyond Iona (with its cargo of mouldering kings) to let the gulls and seals and tides have their way with my remains, and in my dying moments look forward to an encounter with Staffa’s six-sided columns and Fingal’s cave; or I might head south to Corryvrecken, to be spun inside the whirlpool and listen with my waterlogged deaf ears to its mile-wide voice ringing over the wave-race; or be borne north, to where the white sands sing and coral hides, pink-fingered and hard-soft, beneath the ocean swell, and the rampart cliffs climb thousand-foot above the seething acres of milky foam, rainbow-buttressed.
Last night I changed my mind and decided to stay alive. Everything that follows is . . . just to try and explain."
When I'm in a bookshop I sometimes find a copy of Espedair Street and read that again, even though I have at least two copies at home.
Re: Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?
#36Direct link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/books/review/Collins-t.htm... (IMHO this post adds very ltitle) The poster is quite skeptical that books change us. I don't understand why because the truth is this (IMHO) is blatantly self-evident. Even our machine learning models are capable of taking inputs and changing the internal structure creating or modifying the ability to make inferences. Why do you think our b…
I agree, and I believe it would be equally true if applied to video games. You don't become violent by reading crime novels or by playing violent games, but it could potentially change some of your general attitudes and your view of society.
Re: Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?
#37I don't remember much about Moby Dick. a. "Call me Ishmael" = The First Three Words b. Queequeg's Coffin = The Last Bit. c. there was a chapter called Cetology. d. Ambergris is (I think) Whale Sperm, e. At some point in the novel, I'm PRETTY sure someone puts on a whale penis and runs around. They're huge, whale penii, like 6 feet, easy. That's about it, and I'm sure Herman Melville (I guess I remember that too) woul…
>My point is, that one of the -other- benefits of having a breadth of
knowledge, is that it helps prevent unintentional derivativeness and mimicry.
I could not disagree more on the last part. Derivation and mimicry are the very foundation of creativity. Good artists copy. They take from whatever inspires them. In fact, there is no art that doesn't copy - you will not find art that exists in the void. Everyone stands on the shoulders of giants. And that's a good thing.
Re: Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?
#38Direct link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/books/review/Collins-t.htm... (IMHO this post adds very ltitle) The poster is quite skeptical that books change us. I don't understand why because the truth is this (IMHO) is blatantly self-evident. Even our machine learning models are capable of taking inputs and changing the internal structure creating or modifying the ability to make inferences. Why do you think our b…
Doesn't everything reconfigure our neurons? Isn't that the essence of conscious experience? To claim otherwise implies dualism as far as I can see.
We know that the dynamic electrical state can't have much to do with it, because you can cool the brain to the point where all electrical activity ceases and it doesn't have any significant effect when you wake them up. That only leaves the configuration of the brain's parts.
I suppose that there is so much of the biology we don't understand that we can't make strong claims at all, what with microtubules and the like.
Re: Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?
#39[deleted]
Re: Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?
#40I think that taking notes and studying specific important aspects of nonfiction and then practicing recalling and perhaps even incorporating into daily life that information is a great idea.
I believe that one will get much more out of that approach than just hoping that the subconscious or something will absorb the character or key details of a work.