
Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them? - MaysonL
http://arvindn.livejournal.com/135926.html
======
cletus
Direct link:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/books/review/Collins-t.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/books/review/Collins-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)

(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 brains are any different?

When a conversation happens, at first you remember the exact words that were
spoken. Soon you think you do but those details will change between different
participants (they will in fact probably be different from the first moment
for any non-trivial exchange). Then you're left with the gist of what was said
and then later typically an emotion or association with a person, time, place
or some other stimulus.

Books are no different. You may remember key quotes. After awhile you'll
struggle to remember all but the broadest plot elements. Most often you'll
remember that you liked or didn't like the book and often won't be able to
quantify why (in any kind of specific way).

Reference books or books that teach you anything are more "obvious" in this
regard. Read "Effective C++" or "Effective Java" and it'll essentially
reprogram your brain (to varying degrees) by a change in habits, preferences,
etc.

Fiction is harder to pin down. Sometimes it's pure entertainment. It may not
necessarily change you. But there is something about human development that is
particularly receptive to the meme of fiction. The greatest ability we evolved
is the ability to teach our young significant skills such that one generation
is building on the fruits of the last and we've all learned something beyond
how to crack nuts open with rocks.

Fiction often has a moral. Books are capable of changing our behaviour and
attitudes (although many don't).

All of this just seems so obviously analogous to reprogramming a computer
(albeit an incredibly complex one) that it baffles me that people would think
otherwise.

~~~
JonnieCache
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.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
IIRC, electricity is used to activate the release of neurotransmitters
(intercellular communication is actually chemical, not electrical); the more
interesting things are what governs the activation potential, the weights of
the inputs and the connections between neurons. assuming that you can modify
the activation potential across an axon, you still won't change the relative
weights of its inputs or the neuron's connections...

~~~
JonnieCache
_> (intercellular communication is actually chemical, not electrical)_

Passing sodium ions around still sort of counts as electrical though doesn't
it, because you're transferring charge? Or have I misunderstood?

~~~
CognitiveLens
The distinction is that generally we think of "electricity" as a cascade of
electrons, whereas action potentials are a cascade of ions. The net effect of
both is a transfer of charge, but the mechanism is slightly different.

------
jmduke
The list that the OP read:

\- Checklist Manifesto \- Made to Stick \- Confessions of a Public Speaker \-
Why Everyone Else Is a Hypocrite \- The Power of Habit

I think the fact that he's questioning the value of reading such books is fair
(and I find it ironic that he's applying such rigor to try and extract value
from such books), but these are hardly the books of great literature. Self-
improvement and self-motivation books are, perhaps too often, profit-guided
and banal.

You don't read, say, Steinbeck or Vonnegut, to 'remember what's in them.'
(Furthermore, things like 'active recall' aren't going to help you out.)
Authors you have made it to the upper echelons of literature are the ones who
develop distinct voices and talents to attract and evoke you in ways lesser
literature cannot (I can barely remember East of Eden , but I can point to the
emotions it made me feel and the questions it raised about my life) -- these
are the books worth reading, worth bruising yourself on.

~~~
amitdugar
I don't know about other books mentioned above. But I would recommend "Made to
Stick". It is not the usual motivational crap or a regular self-help book. It
is one of the most useful books I have ever come across.

Give it a shot, I am sure you will find something of value in it.

------
mb_72
"Of course, there’s nothing wrong with those things, and ephemeral delight
might be good enough for some people, but I’m usually looking for something
more out of my reading (in fact, I don’t read fiction at all any more)."

I find this comment slightly arrogant and condescending. By choosing not to
read fiction the author deprives himself of experiencing not only "ephemeral
delight", but also removes the possibility of deriving insight from many
inspiring and thought-provoking works.

Not all raw 'brain food' needs come from non-fiction. This is one reason I
like science-fiction - the better works combine fantasy with reality, and
bridge the dream / conscious worlds in a way that very readily lends itself to
new thoughts and ideas.

In addition, the mental escape provided by fiction can be soothing and healing
to the pattern and structure-obsessed mind I - and likely number of HN people
- have. Sci-fi and fantasy books are, for me, as alcohol or drugs are for
others.

~~~
ojbyrne
When I hear someone say "I don't read fiction" I almost always think to
myself, "You don't have any imagination."

~~~
fotbr
Often it's the opposite - they have enough imagination to not need someone
else to imagine for them.

I rarely read fiction simply because I don't have the time to. I've got too
many hobbies that I enjoy, and there's always something about them that I can
learn about them, so my reading is almost always hobby related.

------
InclinedPlane
Can anyone remember every detail of their life over say a month long period
from 3 years ago? Not likely. Does that make life not worth living?

~~~
m104
I doubt remembering everything makes life a lot better, but there actually is
someone we can ask:
[http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-04/ff_perfec...](http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-04/ff_perfectmemory?currentPage=all)

------
anigbrowl
Maybe it's you, guy. I remember what's in books just fine, though sometimes I
reread them for the pleasure of enjoying the author's 'performance' - much as
I like to re-listen to music I already know quite well.

------
nhebb
I think most logical people understand the benefits of reading, so I'm not
going to rehash that.

I went a number of years only reading technical books, but I've been reading a
lot of Project Gutenberg ebooks lately - a mixture of autobiographies,
fiction, poetry, and essays. I don't read them to memorize them. I read them
because they interest me. I don't seem to have any trouble remembering their
content, but even if I didn't, so what? I don't envision myself looking
clever, quoting Whitman and Emerson at cocktail parties.

The _main benefit_ I've received is that they are sort of a detox from the
internet and other forms of media. They have a calming effect and allow me to
think more clearly. It's been nice and I never realized how much I indirectly
benefited from casual reading (i.e., non-technical) until I started again.

~~~
gbog
This "main benefit" is how so superficial. You can watch TV series for the
same result. The main benefit of reading good books is to open your mind,
understand more things and be more curious about the world.

~~~
nhebb
It's not superficial, and TV is one of the other forms of media I was
referring to. I am curious, though, how you purport to know the main benefit
that _I_ receive from reading is.

------
YmMot
When I was very young I developed the habit of rereading almost every book I
read multiple times; unless I found it particularly bad or boring. I think
most kids do this, but some seem to lose the habit along the way. I tend to be
"reading" multiple books at any given time; a new one that gets most of my
attention and then 2 or 3 old ones that I will switch to to break up the pace.
As a result I tend to retain a fair bit; enough that I feel it's worth my
while. There are some books in my collection I can recite large portions of
from reading them so many times. I've probably read the Brothers Karamazov ~20
times. I've never understood this notion some people seem to have of reading a
book and then being done with it.

~~~
ctdonath
Re-reading books (along with re-watching movies) is sensible when you have
infinite time available. When young, you don't grok the concept of a finite
lifespan. When you realize life is finite, you stop re-reading and start
getting on with reading what you can in what time you have left.

------
siavosh
At the risk of being slightly off topic: people rarely discuss the fact that
reading a book can have a negative impact on one's life. Books are just a
materialization of ideas, and they can be good or bad. They can steer you down
a promising path, or an equally unproductive one. And the problem with books
is that they can be very persuasive, using rhetoric, 300+ pages can convince
you of many things.

I've experienced this, and in the course of my own studies, certain books have
taken me down paths that were not the optimal, and I sometimes wonder what
would have happened if I hadn't read (and remembered) those books so well.

That said, I've become a much more critical thinker after these episodes.
Sometimes it's taken years to unwind the effects, but I guess my point is,
books/blog posts/people are in many ways just ideas, and influences on us.
Arguing over whether we forget them or not is not the most important thing
about them--what is, is developing the critical thought process to wonder if
they are in fact worth remembering at all.

~~~
kapilkaisare
I am intrigued. Would you be willing to mention the names of the books and the
paths you believe they took you down?

~~~
siavosh
Sure. Probably most relevant in terms of this forum is a book 'Artificial
Life' by Steven Levy. By itself, there's nothing wrong with this book. It's
very interesting, and I would actually recommend this if anyone is interested
in the subject matter. The catch is, I read this right before college. The
summer before. And it had a profound impact on my course selection (and thus
also the things I did not pick to pursue), it affected my internships, and
research study all the way through the beginning of grad school. Looking back,
I think I could have spent that effort/energy on a different path. Hence my
general wariness to popular science books as they often can take mediocre
ideas and spin them into romantic tales.

------
ctdonath
My family has twenty-six bookcases. Some books read, some not. We're going
thru the agony of culling books for space reasons (and not making much
progress). One strategy is: I intend to fill the largest bookcase with those
which _formed me_ ; I may or may not remember (per se) the contents, but I do
know that I am who I am in great degree because of those books. The hope is
they act as a reminder of who I am (when I lose sight of that), encourage me
to review & expand those parts, and make a physical manifestation of those
formative tomes available to my children that someday they may follow a
similar path (or at least know the path that lead to them). Culling "me" to
fit that space is hard...

~~~
paulovsk
could you make a list of those books that formed you?

------
mtgx
You might not remember exactly what was in the books, but say you read about
some good business principles. Those might become ingrained in your brain, and
later in life, when you have to make certain decisions, you might
involuntarily make those decisions to be compatible with those principles,
even if you don't realize it.

Why do I think this? Because that's how ideas work. Sometimes we say that "we
have an idea" for something, but that idea was formed from bits of pieces of
our experiences and the knowledge we've gained over time, that allowed that
idea to form. It didn't just pop out of nowhere. Your brain put things
together from the bits of knowledge you gained previously.

------
kamaal
Because books are not read for remembering facts, or very few times books
should be read for remember a fact. Unless the fact is life altering, or so
astoundingly beautiful that it just has to be in your brain.

Books are read for fun, to go through emotions, experiences and get a generic
framework to do stuff in life. They must be read for the aha moments and 'You
get the point' kind of moments.

Think of it like meeting an interesting person. Do you go about by remember
each an every line you talked. You just enjoy the experience, go through
emotions and take away what you can.

Reading text books is a little different. That is your art, you need practice
and master. That may require you to 'remember' things.

------
tathagatadg
It is futile to ask if reading a book helps us, it obviously does .... only
problem being ordinary human beings lack the ability reproduce the knowledge
with 100% accuracy in the post reading stage. The question nonetheless is
interesting because it makes you think which part of the communication channel
(author to reader) is the reponsible for the information loss. Let's say the
author has a good command over the language and accordingly can encode the X%
of the information. thankfully the medium is not lossy, so the loss again
happens at the reader end of the communication. Depending on the reader, this
end can result from 0(throw away the book after a few paras) to X%. The reader
end of the communication can be fixed only by the reader itself, solely by
sticking to negotiating the protocols with multiple authors... i.e. read more
to retain more. Makes you wonder is the platform (written text) broken? now
it's really really old, and if you pick up a paper book - how much different
it is than picking up an Indus valley clay tablet as far the intelligence of
the medium is concerned. Shouldn't the reading medium work in the background
to understand the reader's distance from the text and try to embellish the
reading experience by making connections of the book with the reader's reading
history?

------
tomfakes
With fiction, sometimes the entire point can be escapism. A way of taking the
mind elsewhere for a time that allows other things to occur because you are
not thinking about your current issues.

Like taking a shower - which can be where my best thinking can be done!

This can be a really good way of solving tricky day-to-day issues, even if the
process looks like time wasting for those that are overly ambitious.

------
chubot
I agree with the author that making an effort to retain what you read is
worthwhile. It's too easy to be inattentive and let it slip by.

What started happening to me after I read to a certain breadth was that I
would encounter the same idea in different forms in different books. I feel
that's when an idea sinks in -- when you can point to multiple instances of
it, from different fields or domains, phrased in a different way. If you don't
encounter connections between books you've read or other material I feel that
you're probably not retaining anything.

Whenever I read a good book now I feel compelled jot down some of the main
points and connections to other things I've read or experience. Could just be
a paragraph; sometimes it turns into many pages if the book was stimulating. I
don't view this as an exercise in retention; it's just something I have to do
now.

Just talking with other people who've read the same book will probably have
the same effect. But I write it down since I can't always find someone who's
read the same book.

------
saturdaysaint
It's funny that he dismisses the more indirect cognitive gains associated with
reading as lacking "rigorous experimental evidence" when the value of rote
memorization is often just as uncertain. He should just as soon dismiss the
value of mothers if you can't vividly remember most of what they say. He needs
to read "Moonwalking With Einstein".

The real bottleneck is that no matter how rigorously you cram stuff into long
term memory, you can keep precious few things - some experts think 2 - 4 is a
realistic range - in short terms memory. Most of what's on your mind in any
given moment is determined by your environment and activity, and we have
extremely limited ability to randomly access bits of information at will (both
our own memory and whatever we've gleaned from books and teachers).

So I'm sorry, but those connections that we form while learning and
experiencing are about all we've got. The upshot is that reading and
structured learning seem to be extremely efficient ways of building these
connections/schema.

------
farnsworth
This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, and I have to admit
that I'm disappointed that the author also hasn't come up with an easier
solution than work at it and take notes.

I've been using Goodreads.com, which is fantastic for a lot of things like
book recommendations/discovery and reviews. It's easy to write a public review
and to save private notes, and after my Kindle was stolen, I thought it might
be useful for note-taking. However the private notes section is arbitrarily
limited to a very small number of characters, which makes it useless to me as
a note-taking tool. It's not much more difficult to use Evernote or whatever
but I put enough effort into maintaining my shelves on Goodreads that it would
be nice to have notes integrated.

For the time being, I'm back to paper. I miss my Kindle... I can see that it
is still alive somewhere on my account, as I'll periodically email insulting
messages that I can see are delivered on the Kindle control panel.

------
fakelvis
Instead of debating the merits of reading due to the fact that you can't
remember what you read, why not improve _how_ you read to drastically increase
how much you remember. Why not (re-)learn how to _really_ read.

Of course, I'm talking of Adler's _How to Read a Book_.

Admittedly, it's intention was to help in absorbing and analysing The Great
Books [2], but I have found it of unbounded usefulness when reading any non-
fiction (retention rates went through the roof). Regardless: without using the
techniques he discusses (some of you may already, without knowing it) you'll
never be able to read or learn from books at your full potential.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Books>

~~~
jdrake3
I seem to recall he even has a brief section on fiction. Of course I may have
an older edition, or simply be misremembering it... probably time to read it
again.

------
spiredigital
This is one of the reasons I love the Kindle - it lets me highlight important
parts, and see all your notes on one screen - perfect!

The other day I needed to brush up on 'The Post American World' when writing a
recommendation on it. So I just read through my Kindle notes in a few minutes
and 80% of the book comes back to me.

------
philmcc
I 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.

\------

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.)

~~~
slowpoke
_> 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.

------
gwern
To copy over my comment:

I think even if you cannot explicitly remember what you read, that's very far
from them having no effects on you. (An analogy: you can understand scores of
thousands of English words, even if you could only spontaneously use half or
less of them.)

Ever since I began switching to electronic reading with the attendant clipping
and searchability, I've been surprised how many "things I know" turn out to
stem from books or articles I otherwise do not recall at all. If I had tried
to estimate what I know just based on what factoids I could specifically
remember learning from a specific book, I would grossly underestimate the
value of my reading.

------
monochromatic
I 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 resonated with
me. It's even gotten to the point that I've googled the line itself sometimes
to remember what book it came from, at which point I'll usually give it a
second read.

Maybe I'm just weird though.

~~~
arethuza
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.

------
lionhearted
I didn't read fiction for around five years for this reason, but actually,
there's some pretty compelling evidence that fiction (or, stories, rather) can
help grasp difficult concepts better than non-fiction.

Chip and Dan Heath's "Made To Stick" goes over how we remember stories
naturally much better than data/information not in a narrative/story. For my
part, I can't think of any non-fiction that could prompt curiosity and
attention to detail like the Sherlock Holmes series, or the process of gaining
self-mastery like Musashi.

------
Tyrannosaurs
His casual and arrogant dismissal of fiction is remarkable ("I’m usually
looking for something more out of my reading"), as if something has to be non-
fiction to be educational, informative or have a valid lesson to impart.

There's obviously nothing wrong with a drive for continual self improvement,
but it does seem to me (entirely anecdotally) that there are too many people
following this track have a very functional, one dimensional approach to it
which this seems to typify.

------
pacomerh
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.

------
unimpressive
Reading is fun. The books that we read start dialogues and introduce concepts
that we won't remember until we think of them in association with something
else. That the OP has to try and justify reading to himself in some sort of
rigorous quantitative fashion is just sad.

And I remember plenty of what I read just fine. (Enough of it to satisfy my
requirements to keep doing so.)

------
galfarragem
If a book gives you one extra idea, one extra concept or one not obvious link
between concepts or ideas that you already have it worths a lot to loose time
reading it. If you read 500 books like this you get much more intelectual rich
than a non reader person. I can regret a lot of stuff in my life but I don't
regret reading most of the books I have read.

------
ilaksh
I 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.

------
mhb
This applies to many things - isn't it even a common science fiction trope
(e.g., Total Recall).

I'm at home. I go on a trip and have experiences which change the arrangement
of molecules in my brain. Now I'm home again - the same except for some
rearrangements. Why actually go on the trip if I could, instead, have the
rearrangement implemented?

------
ThomPete
We read because we are looking for ideas that confirm our own thinking or
slightly alter them.

99% of a book is wasted on you but the last 1% slightly alters your perception
or broaden your perspective.

It's like everything else in nature. To create you need to plough trough a lot
of seemingly useless experiments.

------
stewbrew
I'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.

------
webwanderings
It is pretty impossible to read a book - a real book - and take notes on
computer. I don't know how one would take notes on old fashioned writing pad,
while reading a book, at the same time.

~~~
trevelyan
write in the margins!

~~~
mahmud
yeah, don't be like Fermat.

------
swah
Much simpler to just do the experience of reading a book or see a movie you
have completely forgotten a second time. (Of course you must remember which
book you've read...)

------
dfc
What are the life altering benefits he is reaping?

------
dscrd
Why read blogs?

------
phektus
hummm... so books are meant to be memorized?

------
eagsalazar
The attitude of the author is irritating and all too common in people in love
with a self image of being an intellectual.

"In the absence of rigorous experimental evidence, I’m quite skeptical." -
This is not logic. This is an arrogant and out of hand rejection of a
hypothesis that has not yet been proven or disproven.

" “expert” who “totally believes” you’re a “different person” for having read
books even if you don’t retain anything, with some flimsy feel-good reasoning
such as the “extraordinary capacity for storage” that our brains have"

This is better reasoning than that put forth by the author by far. I love the
quotes around "expert". WTF? Does he mean the PhD in Neuroscience and Prof at
Tufts? That "expert"? The one who actually has studied this subject in depth?

As many other poster point out, we don't even remember most of our own lives
but it is totally absurd to say our life experiences therefore don't influence
us and that we shouldn't try to fill our lives with pleasurable moments.

It is unfortunate he defends working to remember more of what he reads with
such a flawed and irritating argument because trying to remember what you read
is an awesome and worthwhile pursuit. There is no need however to bash all of
literary fiction and the reading 99.9% of people on this earth enjoy.

~~~
vacri
Not to mention that his same arguments can be applied to all fiction (movies,
plays, etc) and music ('fleeting entertainment' which you don't jot down for
use elsewhere). The author sounds like a tedious, trite person that wouldn't
be much fun to be around.

Similarly, while he's trying to pose as an intellectual as you say, he misses
the point that we learn things in multiple layers. Rememberance of the literal
wording is only one layer. Witness Romeo and Juliet, a classic story which
most people are familiar with, but extremely few would be able to quote a line
from. Reading this guy's essay was like listening to those insufferable fresh
graduates who claim 'but I never learned anything at university'.

------
rsanchez1
Easy solution: just read material that you find interesting enough to
remember. Any book that I read I remember fairly well. I often read through
paragraphs a couple of times if they have a lot of information or interesting
developments. If I try to read a book I don't have interesting, then I just
don't remember. I have to re-read it over and over to really get information
to stick if I need that information to stick, which was the case in high
school English classes.

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sparknlaunch
Sadly memory and recall are not my strong point. In fact I am surprised I even
remember anything when I see how quickly it takes to forget things. How much
of Hacker News do you remember?

The old adage of you remember 60% of what you read on day 1, 30% day 2 and 5%
day 5. Within a day you are already suffering a painful decay rate.

Therefore any method to remember something (rather than nothing) is of
importance.

