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Ask HN: How much do you remember from books you read only once?

by joeclef on 4/4/15, 5:07 PM with 48 comments

• by sytelus on 4/4/15, 6:59 PM

  Your brain has a policy of use it or lose it. If what you are reading is relevant to what you are doing, you would remember it otherwise finer details would mostly evaporate rather quickly. This is not just about books but for other things in life too, for example, your past travels or people you meet day to day. Some people are fortunate to have photographic memory way in to their 30s but that's rare.

  For most things in life, I would suggest using this philosophy: You don't want to or need to remember everything, rather you want to figure out what insight you attained from something. For example, after reading a book, writing down the summery, your opinions and insights at that point would help you more than remembering every detail. Some people use margin of the book or highlight passages that they find useful and that's good technique that really works. Similarly for your travels, instead of writing down every tiny details if you just maintain logs of surprises and insights you attained each day would be great way to remember it. Lot of people just go through one book after another and that's actually significant waste of time as you are not taking time to digest and reflect on the effort you put in to go through the thing. Writing things down jogs your memory, forces you to ask questions and brings up the critical insights that you are otherwise just passing by. In essence, 3 things helps you the most: write, write and write :).

• by muddyrivers on 4/4/15, 6:01 PM

  This happens to me as well. Here is my experience and interpretation.

  Before I turned ~20 years old, I was able to remember almost everything from a book, except exact numbers and foreign names. Along with getting older, I could remember less and less. However, I feel a good book has greater and greater influences on me. It makes me think more, gives me more perspective, makes me realize more how little I know and understand. I paused more often to think what I just read, instead of just browsing through the book.

  This also applies to technical books. Take books on programming languages as example. When i was young, I could remember most of its syntax after finishing a book on a new language, and I could jump into writing a program using the language that could actually be compiled and run. Now, I cannot remember much about syntax, but I feel I understand more about the new language, in term of its design, internals, pros and cons, etc. When I am ready to get hands dirty, I have to keep checking manuals for syntax.

• by Red_Tarsius on 4/4/15, 6:34 PM

  One book? Not much. Effective storytelling helps a lot, but only for fiction.

  The trick is to read many interrelated books. Same topic, different words. Those variations on a theme let you quickly uncover the core message behind authors' styles. The repetition, with slightly different editorial choices, drills into your mind. Variations on a theme are what makes play so effective as well.

  Take notes in a fixed ritualistic manner. Choose the ONE notebook you'll use; Write down the most important passages by hand in a slow, precise way. Most importantly, write a summary of the whole book and FIND CONNECTIONS between concepts from different books.

  I have no scientific paper to show you. I read +-50 books every year and this is only my personal experience.

• by timdaub on 4/4/15, 5:41 PM

  slightly ot, but pg just recently wrote an essay about the issue:

  > Reading and experience train your model of the world. And even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world persists. Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. It works, but you don't know why.

  http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html

• by jseliger on 4/4/15, 5:09 PM

  Depends on the book; the average book I remember very little of. But the books that are great, and that hit me at the right time, I tend to remember more about, but not enough, so I tend to re-read them.

  Re-reading books is underrated.

• by SatvikBeri on 4/4/15, 7:57 PM

  Nowadays I use spaced repetition software to capture anything interesting I see in a book (including insights that occur to me while reading), so I basically remember everything I want to. Before using SRS I might remember ~20% of a book.

• by yawaramin on 4/4/15, 6:36 PM

  'I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.'

  ~ Maya Angelou

• by rtz12 on 4/4/15, 7:33 PM

  Mostly everything, I just have trouble accessing it without a lead. But I can't read a book twice, as I instanty know what happens next.

• by ChuckMcM on 4/4/15, 5:50 PM

  Depends on the book, for most of the Science Fiction I read I can recall them entirely and so re-reading them is not nearly as fun as the initial reading. My Engineering Calculus book from college? Not so much. Although I still remember all of the examples from my differential equations textbook. I have hypothesized in that this is because I tend to reason by analogy and those examples were examples by analogy so they found fertile ground to land in my head. Bulk facts? Don't remember. Stories? Almost always remember. And oddly enough when reading scientific papers I'll often recall the story of what the investigators were trying find out or how they got there, before I can narrow it down to the actual result.

  As a kid I figured that this was why peoples who didn't have writing passed on knowledge in stories (easier to remember). But I've never found any support of that theory one way or the other (at least that I can recall!)

• by techdog on 4/4/15, 5:31 PM

  It probably is true, but IMHO it's not "how much you remember" but how you are changed by what you read.

• by kazinator on 4/4/15, 6:13 PM

  A little over two years ago, I answered a related question on the Academia stack exchange site:

  http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7514/what-is-the...

• by jeffreyrogers on 4/4/15, 5:36 PM

  This happens to me as well. I have noticed, however, that while I can't recall facts very well from books I've read they often do change my perspective on things and that is much longer lasting. For example, reading the book "The Selfish Gene" had a profound effect on how I thought about the world, even though I can't remember much at all of its contents other than it being about how evolution selects at the level of genes.

  With more technical books I find it is almost impossible for me to learn anything substantial from them unless I do the exercises, however, the exercises tend to take an enormous amount of time. So what I find myself doing is skimming most technical books and then then going more in depth on the few that seem relevant/interesting to me.

• by ne01 on 4/4/15, 5:37 PM

  I remember almost everything and here is I think why...

  I have an ereader which I take to bed at night and I love reading until I pass out!

  It takes me a few nights to finish a book and most of the time the next morning I practice.

  Most of the books are about programming which is a topic that I'm literally in love with!

• by sonnym on 4/4/15, 5:53 PM

  It really depends on the book for me. Technical topics I already know pretty well, I find easy to commit new methods to memory when I come across them. Nontechnical, I can remember a good deal of fiction, but factual things fall off pretty quickly.

  I think the most important thing is chunking[1]. You remember key things, such as storylines or plots from fiction, or, with technical writing, where to return if you find yourself needing a particular concept in practice.

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_%28psychology%29

• by DonGateley on 4/5/15, 1:20 AM

  I've a particularly bad case of short term to long term drought. More than once I've been well into a book or short story before realizing I've read it before. Occasionally not until I get to the ending.

• by misiti3780 on 4/4/15, 6:03 PM

  I am actually developing an iPhone right now with the intentions of solving this problem. Email me and I can tell you what I am building - maybe you have some ideas for features that might help: joseph.misiti@gmail.com

• by annie_ab on 4/4/15, 11:59 PM

  Well, it's a good thing to ponder on and it's also a pressing issue. In most of the cases, I only remember those facts and incidents, which have affected me or appealed to me in a significant way. When I read a book, I can relate to particular parts based on my life experience, my culture and environment. Sometimes, longer retention of a book depends on how much the book is awe-inspiring and the age of the reader. I guess the pressing issue is to learn and retain relevant things for a longer period of time after reading a book

• by lewisjoe on 4/4/15, 5:33 PM

  For me there are two modes with a thin line of difference whilst reading any book.

  In one mode, I tend to have a huge affinity towards either the author of the book or the potential content of the book. When I happen to read a book in such a mode, my grasping power works super good and whatever I read on seems to stay in memory for a longer time.

  The other mode is when I come across a resource, that looks potentially interesting and I'm scanning it to pick up anything that takes me from zero to one. This is when remembering things takes a little more effort for me.

• by mjklin on 4/4/15, 11:39 PM

  Here is my procedure for anyone interested:

  * I read all books through audio, with the PDF of the book and the Voice Dream app on iOS.

  * I make highlights and notes as I go, then export to a text file when I'm done. So I have the highlights on one hand and the highlighted PDF on the other.

  * If I think the notes are important, I will break the text file into individual notes and index them with SCAN and/or dtSearch. I've heard DevonThink is perfect for this, but it's Mac only.

  I could probably integrate spaced repetition here, but I haven't explored that yet. Just my $0.02.

• by Vellin on 4/5/15, 5:51 AM

  My brain tends to retain information that it can "see" being played out or performed. Formulas and equations for example from math textbooks or whatever have to be focused on and drawn out as if I have a tiny go pro looking down the end of my pencil at what's being written in my mind as I read the content. Sounds strange but when I actively make myself retain it this way I can usually bring it back from my memory very well remembering the "go pro on pencil video" of the content I need to remember.

• by ddingus on 4/4/15, 6:37 PM

  It depends on the book and whether or not I was impacted by it.

  Just reading means I will recall something about the book, it's coverage domains, and maybe some higher level details.

  If I work with material in the book, even once, what I remember is significantly improved.

  Impact can be from that, working with material, or it can come from relevance to things I'm focused on. Sometimes, I read a book, and some parts of it end up being very relevant and I think about it and make connections.

  I recall a lot of this, and do so in detail.

• by saturngirl on 4/4/15, 8:41 PM

  Depends on your goal.

  1. If you want to remember a book, so that you can write about it later in life -> start writing summaries after every chapter you read and a final one at the end of the book.

  2. If you want to remember details in the book, so that you can talk clearly about it to someone -> get in the habit of speaking to someone about what you learned from the book, while you am reading the book. It is best if this is your significant other or someone who also has interest in the subject.

• by delbel on 4/4/15, 7:50 PM

  This concept is sometimes called the Forgetting Curve and is described by an formula. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition

• by notatoad on 4/4/15, 5:43 PM

  That entirely depends on the book (but not the subject matter). There's some books that i read once and am constantly recalling things from, there's other books that i can read a couple times, feel like i'm understanding or enjoying it while reading it, and then a couple weeks later i can't remember it at all. This holds true for me across technical, non-technical, and fiction.

  Writing memorably is a skill.

• by randomnumber53 on 4/4/15, 5:41 PM

  I am a mildly dyslexic. I have excellent reading comprehension, but I read about a standard deviation slower than the average reader.

  Thus, I don't think I've ever read a book "only once," since in order to understand much of anything, I always end up reading each page paragraph, sentence, or word until I understand it before I progress.

• by Qantourisc on 4/4/15, 8:47 PM

  Once had to read a fiction book for school, and write a summary. By the end of the book I drew a blank, and I had to skim the entire book again.

  Technical books are a lot easier to remember, well assuming you are reading them to learn something (specific ). But that also implies you read something think about it, make exercises, learn it and THEN move on.

• by joshgel on 4/4/15, 8:43 PM

  Consider how you haven't adjusted how you read probably since you were in grade school. http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/how-to-read-a-book/

• by drabiega on 4/4/15, 5:32 PM

  I have read a lot of books but only a few more than once. I probably only remember bits I thought were important from any particular book, but when I read several on the same subject they tend to overlap in certain parts and I find I remember those parts very well.

• by vishaldpatel on 4/4/15, 5:45 PM

  A well-written book will be easier to remember.

  Granted, that one may have to read it again to remember the finer details, but rarely is a technical book written with the aim engaging the reader in as many ways as possible.

  This is why telling a story is so important. People remember stories.

• by otar on 4/4/15, 8:04 PM

  Shameless plug: https://medium.com/@otar/lifehack-remembering-what-you-read-...

  Lifehack: Remembering What You Read

• by sebkomianos on 4/4/15, 5:51 PM

  Not nearly enough and that's why I have decided to actually re-read the books that I find great; after a certain amount of time though so I can do it with a (more) "clear" mind.

• by foobarqux on 4/4/15, 7:01 PM

  Reading alone, even repeated reading, has been shown to be ineffective in committing information to long term memory.

  You should be able to remember the basic story in a piece of fiction though.

• by elvispt on 4/4/15, 5:36 PM

  I find it normal.

  Whenever I re-read a book I look at it in a different light or, better yet, I have a new understanding of the book.

• by ics on 4/4/15, 7:43 PM

  I used to be able to remember most of what I read verbatim without any effort. These days, the harder I try to filter and remember selectively, the worse my memory gets. What started as a mild compulsion has since become very useful– taking brief notes as I go on a blank 4x6 notecard. I have stacks and stacks of them, and every book I start gets a fresh one. Annotating books in the margins can help you get into it more, but it makes going back much harder (might as well re-read the book) and pains anyone who likes to keep their pages scrupulously clean. My "system" is not very strict but mostly follows these ideas:

      - Every note begins with a page number unless the same as the previous note
      - Notes are separated by a /
      - Underline names/places/any *thing* to look up later
      - Mark very important notes with a star or border
      - Copying chapter titles sometimes helps
      - Copy quotes, quick references (to other works), typos
        (not really necessary, but "Statute of Liberty"...), or
        thoughts & tangents. Typically I just write down a few
        words here and there and then write about them
        elsewhere (on the computer or in my notebook)
      - At the very end, include a brief summary of what I felt
        like or knew about before reading, while reading, and
        after reading. I only find this useful for bios,
        letters, theses, and that sort of thing.
  

  I can: re-read my notes and it will come back, skim notes to narrow down a page range for a detail that I'm looking for, scan the notecards for reference anywhere, keep my notes for library books, etc. That being said, I don't really recommend it to people. If you write slowly, large, or don't like keeping a pen/pencil on hand then it can be annoying.

  Aside: I've considered automatically putting these notes into Anki after OCR (the one shown is a messy example, it seems to work though) but I think that's touching a matter apart from the top poster's intention. Rote memorization is useful, but the simple act of writing stuff down by hand has its own benefits without requiring much involvement.

  Another thing to point out is that what you read is just as important. The reason I care about extracting references to other works, even if I can't read them immediately, is because it cements a topic in your mind rather than just being another cloud of words and hazy memories. Today I read Species of Spaces (Georges Perec) and on one page he references Forbidden Planet because of the large triangular doors. I made a note of it since I don't actually know what he's talking about (born in the '90s, didn't have TV, didn't see Forbidden Planet, don't blame me). Mentioning it here might actually be enough to make it stick, but I still intend to either read up on the film or, if I have the time, watch it (but not just for that scene!).

  Example: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28629850/Condit%2C%20Car... (side 1 of 2)