How to forget what you read

You know what makes the difference?

Take a walk, or catch a train and think about what you read. Find the main ideas and how the material relates to yourself. Play with it and ask yourself questions about it.

Then next day try to answer them in paper without extra material. And only after that reread the book to check or find unsolved the answers.

Learning is hard. There is nothing as easy learning. The good news is that it can be hand AND fun.

About reading:

Engage in every sentence, ask yourself what the writer is trying to tell you in every sentence, after that translate it to imagination and relate it with yourself and what you already know.

There is shallow reading and deep reading. Deep reading is a must for technical books, but also a joy for fiction. I still remember so vividly the coldness and texture of the walls of the hobbit's first mountain tunnels despite haven't been told about it.

> Is [reading] just a waste of time? Well, no, I don’t think so. Every book makes a mark. Even if it doesn’t stay in your conscious memory. Just as every single thing that happens to you does and every person you meet.

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 own thinking. But this doesn't mean that you have "forgotten" them.