As someone with a bad memory as well, I don't think you'll find a silver bullet here. Think about it this way: I think almost everyone's done some form of exer

As someone with a bad memory as well, I don't think you'll find a silver bullet here. Think about it this way: I think almost everyone's done some form of exercise in school or online that shows how bad most people are about absorbing details unless they know they're significant when they see them. Imagine spending 10 hours walking around an unfamiliar mall, even if you took concentration breaks, and being able to answer specific questions about your experience. How many times did you go around? How many people did you see? How many stores are there? Can you list them? You probably couldn't answer any of those, but you probably would remember a few of the most significant moments. Someone who bumped into you, a crying child, a shoplifter, a beautiful stranger, a shirt you wanted. If you tried, and knew ahead of time, you could probably actually answer one or two of the above questions by actively spending most of your limited attention--but I would bet you'll remember even less about the rest of your experience. You might not even notice the beautiful stranger. You can, of course, train yourself to become more aware of your surroundings as they pass by, and if you saw something you wanted to remember you could practice some techniques to make it more likely you'd hold on to the details. Now, imagine being able to remember your answer to any of those questions about the mall trip two years later. Unless you regularly reference the mall trip and your answer, you'll probably forget. This doesn't mean reading books you don't remember is useless. Our experiences still rub off on us, affecting who we are and how we move in the world. You don't say what kind of books you're reading, nor what you hope to remember about them later. I think those are where the best answers to your question lie. Some books have little more than one or two ideas worth remembering; read them as fast as you can (both speed-reading and skimming techniques can be of use, here). Others can change your life, if you unpack them as you go; you would be a fool to hurry through them. Learning to understand the words passing under your eyes at a high rate of speed is a great tool, but be aware that you're reducing the life-surface-area of what you read when you do so. You'll make fewer connections as you go, so it gets increasingly important to use other strategies for making them. Engage with significant ideas as you find them. A summative note is a good start, but it's better to connect it with other ideas, apply it to a problem, expand on it, or talk with someone about it.