51–60 of 97 posts
When you read in clusters around the same topic the same concepts will get reinforced over and over again.
Forgetting is good. This what makes our brain grow.
You read to train it, not to be a walking reference book.
The way to remember what you read is to make sure you understand all the words in the text, the way they apply in context. It's the micro-misunderstandings that lead up to the macro-misunderstanding which manifests as "forgetting". Other commenters also mention applying what's in the book. That is 100% true, when you're reading about how to do something. If you're reading a fact-based book (non-fiction) but not about…
This is what turned the tide for me but it took much more discipline than I was willing to admit at first. When I stopped lying to myself about how much context clues were helping me understand the words I didn’t know, it started to take me 10 minutes to get through a page of a difficult book. However, it started to pay off when I achieved a deeper understanding of the books I was reading.
Nabokov's solution to this dilemma, reread. The only good reader is, as he said, a re-reader. If we're honest nobody can actually remember more than a dozen books, and if you pick the right ones there's more to learn in any of them than you can learn in years. It's similar to the sentiment that the only way to understand a poem is to be able to recite it from memory, or the fact that some pianists play nothing else b…
If anyone else is wondering, it's in his book encyclopedia of imaginary lands
Nabokov's solution to this dilemma, reread. The only good reader is, as he said, a re-reader. If we're honest nobody can actually remember more than a dozen books, and if you pick the right ones there's more to learn in any of them than you can learn in years. It's similar to the sentiment that the only way to understand a poem is to be able to recite it from memory, or the fact that some pianists play nothing else b…
> Mark up the book Good for a book's first reader. What I really hate is browsing a used bookstore and finding something interesting or ordering a used book online, only to find it covered in markings (especially as some readers seem to highlight the most banal things). Very distracting. I usually can't bring myself to mark up my own books for fear that I will distract my future self (or some other future reader if I…
My preference, rather than write in the book, is to write notes on little notepads and leave the note in the book as bookmarks. Probably not good for the books themselves if I add too many but it is convenient and I don’t have to worry about someone downstream finding my marginalia banal.
Although this article is full on tips on how to take notes, this is the tip that stuck out the most for me. I've tried many different strategies to take notes and how to remember them. I figured out that the thing that worked best for me was actually to keep note taking as simple as possible. The more "steps" [1] I use during note taking, the more structure and rules I try to add to my notes [2], the worse everything gets. The more steps I have to take to make a note, the less likely it is that I'll make that note. The technique for notetaking that works best for me is, maybe paradoxically, also the simplest to perform: I take notes with pen and paper and review the notes now and then, nothing more, nothing less. This way of taking notes works (for me) and is easy to stick to.
[1] - https://fs.blog/2013/11/taking-notes-while-reading/
[2] - https://www.amazon.nl/dp/1542866502?tag=farnamstreet-20
> The best technique for notetaking is whichever one works for you and is easy to stick to. Although this article is full on tips on how to take notes, this is the tip that stuck out the most for me. I've tried many different strategies to take notes and how to remember them. I figured out that the thing that worked best for me was actually to keep note taking as simple as possible. The more "steps" [1] I use during…
I once read a short essay by Patrick Süskind (author of "Perfume - The Story of a Murderer"). I am paraphrasing, but in it, he discusses his embarrassment that he cannot remember even major plot details or character names of great works of world literature, although he has read them multiple times and they deeply inspired his own work. He then makes an interesting speculation: if a book really and deeply influences you, then maybe actively remembering facts and insights of the book becomes harder and harder, because the book's ideas have been so deeply ingrained into your brain and thinking that you cannot remember them as facts independent of your thinking. But this doesn't mean that you have "forgotten" them.