6 ms·

There's reading, and then there's remembering and using most of it a couple of months later and years later. Otherwise it just becomes another form of newspape

by elai 16y ago

There's reading, and then there's remembering and using most of it a couple of months later and years later. Otherwise it just becomes another form of newspaper/HN reading and just mostly gives a vague reference memory in the back of your head.

pavs 16y ago
Unless you are savant you are not going to remember most of what you have read couple of months or years later however you are likely to have a vague recollection of the general gist o the book. You are also not going to use most of the things you have read/learned in the book in real life. Unless you are only reading self-help type of books.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- mquander 16y ago
  This is not normal. If you give a damn, you will retain good books; it's not magic. Think carefully about the ideas you read, write notes (if you like), and fit them into your mind.
  - pavs 16y ago
    Sure. If you read 2-5 books a year, its possible.
    - mquander 16y ago
      Everyone reads and learns at different speeds, but for me, M carefully considered books per year is better than N mostly forgotten ones, for all positive M and N.
      - pavs 16y ago
        You are eventually going to forget most of what you read few years later. So to me, the extra effort in trying to "remember" a book seems pointless. To me relational connection is more important that "remembering" a book. For instance if you can point out "x event" in a book I have read (if it is a particularly interesting part of the book), I can give you a gist of what that x event in the book was talking about and things related to that event. I can also recall similar events in other books I have read. However if you ask me to remember a "hard number" or "hard fact" I will most likely not recall it. "Remembering" a book seems like ridiculously thing to do unless its a programming book or you are preparing for an exam in school or work related. You tries to remember books in casual reading?
        zackattack 16y ago
        Crescat scientia, vita excolatur. This is an issue that I myself am grappling with. I read a lot in 2010. I probably read about 50 books. Some of them, I actively read: I kept my pen handy, underlined where appropriate and then wrote questions in the margins. If I made notes on a page, I would circle the page number; once I finished, I would flip through all of the pages with circled page numbers, and then dump all my notes into a plain text document. I would then try to assert some sort of cohesive logical structure on my dump, INTP-style, and then post it to ZacharyBurt.com. I hate the feeling I feel when someone mentions an idea from a book I have read, me appraising it as so (fresh and different), and then me feeling that if I had to invoke that idea as part of a creative solution to a problem, it probably wouldn't have come to the forefront of my consciousness. And of course, could I tell you the precise contents of many of those books? No. In fairness, Leonardo himself observed that genius requires spaced repetition. To that end, while reading, I have tried to build the habit of skimming ultimately irrelevant, unless needed for later reference, details. I still read them to evaluate whether they deserve a more in-depth look. But I am concerned here that my process is not ideal. Has the reading bolstered my creativity and pattern matching ability? Probably. Has it improved my analytic capacity? Probably, especially noticeable during the time period after I finish reading a book. Do I remember the core lessons from each book? No. And that's a big problem. Usually with a book I try to figure out a few different take-aways and then implement them into my life. But unless I implement them immediately and convert them into habits, I will probably lose the lessons. A challenge I face as a reader, and perhaps why I have accumulated a small following as a writer, is figuring out how to convert ideas from a book into actionable habits. So what major life habit changes have I made in 2010? I became vegan. That's it. But I also made some changes to my business strategy, putting lots of money in my pocket. And I became better at competitive sports. I felt happy for greater intervals of time. And my mental map of how my brain works has become more clear. And hopefully, the books I choose to read next year will be ultimately more relevant useful and practical. I have been planting seeds (for creative sprouting, which has paid some initial dividends). I have been also grasping for intellectual edification, trying to answer big questions that have been lurking in my head. Hopefully I will also start asking better questions instead of wasting time on the wrong questions. Practically, I think that I could reduce each book I read into a few solid actionable ideas/suggestions. I may actually go through each of my blog's entries. If I eliminate rationale, I will be left with only results.. and people pay for results. Want to get the personal improvement of reading 50 books without having to compensate my ego by listening through my insufferable nerdy analysis? Get the PDF for $X. I also have to figure out how I want to shift my reading strategy for 2011. Thoughts welcome.
      - nextparadigms 16y ago
        If you read business books for example, you don't have to memorize everything you read in them. If you retain the main idea of the book and perhaps a few examples where that idea has been applied, it's good enough. But even that is not necessary with all the books you read, as long as the ideas in those books remain somewhere in your unconscious mind. Later, when you'll be faced with a business decision, you'll just "know" what the right decision is, without having to pinpoint where you've heard that before. If you can get at least that from the books, it should be good enough and valuable for you in the long term.
      - nostrademons 16y ago
        It's not an either-or. You can read N books and remember M of them, along with having a vague recollection of the other N-M. For example, here's the list of books I read in 2005: http://nostrademons.livejournal.com/83785.html#cutid1 http://nostrademons.livejournal.com/83785.html#cutid1 I remember maybe a little more than half of them, and perhaps 1/6 of them fundamentally changed my thinking enough that I'd be able to remember in detail (you can quiz me on them if you want an accurate sample). However, 1/6 of 150 books is still 25 books. There seem to be a bunch of people on this thread who would love to read 25 books/year, let alone remember them in detail.
  - jsz0 16y ago
    You may remember good books vividly but there are a ton of mediocre books and bad books that are about as useless as any web page and as easily forgotten. I feel like sometimes people romanticize books far too much. I recently finished Eaarth by Bill McKibben and I felt like the whole book could have been nicely covered in a 10 paragraph blog post. It wasn't a bad book, not even very long, but I couldn't tell you much of anything about it other than "climate change is bad." I guess my point is you have to be pretty selective about the quality of books you read just as you need to be selective about the quality of web content you read. The plus side of the web is brevity makes the bad choices more tolerable. You don't spend days reading a bad web article hoping it might get better. (It got good reviews. It must be good. Just a few more pages...)
    - eneveu 16y ago
      There was an interesting discussion on this very subject 6 months ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/books/review/Collins-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/books/review/Collins-t.htm... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1743513 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1743513

by elai 16y ago

pavs 16y ago

Unless you are savant you are not going to remember most of what you have read couple of months or years later however you are likely to have a vague recollection of the general gist o the book. You are also not going to use most of the things you have read/learned in the book in real life. Unless you are only reading self-help type of books.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
mquander 16y ago
This is not normal. If you give a damn, you will retain good books; it's not magic. Think carefully about the ideas you read, write notes (if you like), and fit them into your mind.
- pavs 16y ago
  Sure. If you read 2-5 books a year, its possible.
  - mquander 16y ago
    Everyone reads and learns at different speeds, but for me, M carefully considered books per year is better than N mostly forgotten ones, for all positive M and N.
    - pavs 16y ago
      You are eventually going to forget most of what you read few years later. So to me, the extra effort in trying to "remember" a book seems pointless. To me relational connection is more important that "remembering" a book. For instance if you can point out "x event" in a book I have read (if it is a particularly interesting part of the book), I can give you a gist of what that x event in the book was talking about and things related to that event. I can also recall similar events in other books I have read. However if you ask me to remember a "hard number" or "hard fact" I will most likely not recall it. "Remembering" a book seems like ridiculously thing to do unless its a programming book or you are preparing for an exam in school or work related. You tries to remember books in casual reading?
      - zackattack 16y ago
        Crescat scientia, vita excolatur. This is an issue that I myself am grappling with. I read a lot in 2010. I probably read about 50 books. Some of them, I actively read: I kept my pen handy, underlined where appropriate and then wrote questions in the margins. If I made notes on a page, I would circle the page number; once I finished, I would flip through all of the pages with circled page numbers, and then dump all my notes into a plain text document. I would then try to assert some sort of cohesive logical structure on my dump, INTP-style, and then post it to ZacharyBurt.com. I hate the feeling I feel when someone mentions an idea from a book I have read, me appraising it as so (fresh and different), and then me feeling that if I had to invoke that idea as part of a creative solution to a problem, it probably wouldn't have come to the forefront of my consciousness. And of course, could I tell you the precise contents of many of those books? No. In fairness, Leonardo himself observed that genius requires spaced repetition. To that end, while reading, I have tried to build the habit of skimming ultimately irrelevant, unless needed for later reference, details. I still read them to evaluate whether they deserve a more in-depth look. But I am concerned here that my process is not ideal. Has the reading bolstered my creativity and pattern matching ability? Probably. Has it improved my analytic capacity? Probably, especially noticeable during the time period after I finish reading a book. Do I remember the core lessons from each book? No. And that's a big problem. Usually with a book I try to figure out a few different take-aways and then implement them into my life. But unless I implement them immediately and convert them into habits, I will probably lose the lessons. A challenge I face as a reader, and perhaps why I have accumulated a small following as a writer, is figuring out how to convert ideas from a book into actionable habits. So what major life habit changes have I made in 2010? I became vegan. That's it. But I also made some changes to my business strategy, putting lots of money in my pocket. And I became better at competitive sports. I felt happy for greater intervals of time. And my mental map of how my brain works has become more clear. And hopefully, the books I choose to read next year will be ultimately more relevant useful and practical. I have been planting seeds (for creative sprouting, which has paid some initial dividends). I have been also grasping for intellectual edification, trying to answer big questions that have been lurking in my head. Hopefully I will also start asking better questions instead of wasting time on the wrong questions. Practically, I think that I could reduce each book I read into a few solid actionable ideas/suggestions. I may actually go through each of my blog's entries. If I eliminate rationale, I will be left with only results.. and people pay for results. Want to get the personal improvement of reading 50 books without having to compensate my ego by listening through my insufferable nerdy analysis? Get the PDF for $X. I also have to figure out how I want to shift my reading strategy for 2011. Thoughts welcome.
    - nextparadigms 16y ago
      If you read business books for example, you don't have to memorize everything you read in them. If you retain the main idea of the book and perhaps a few examples where that idea has been applied, it's good enough. But even that is not necessary with all the books you read, as long as the ideas in those books remain somewhere in your unconscious mind. Later, when you'll be faced with a business decision, you'll just "know" what the right decision is, without having to pinpoint where you've heard that before. If you can get at least that from the books, it should be good enough and valuable for you in the long term.
    - nostrademons 16y ago
      It's not an either-or. You can read N books and remember M of them, along with having a vague recollection of the other N-M. For example, here's the list of books I read in 2005: http://nostrademons.livejournal.com/83785.html#cutid1 http://nostrademons.livejournal.com/83785.html#cutid1 I remember maybe a little more than half of them, and perhaps 1/6 of them fundamentally changed my thinking enough that I'd be able to remember in detail (you can quiz me on them if you want an accurate sample). However, 1/6 of 150 books is still 25 books. There seem to be a bunch of people on this thread who would love to read 25 books/year, let alone remember them in detail.
- jsz0 16y ago
  You may remember good books vividly but there are a ton of mediocre books and bad books that are about as useless as any web page and as easily forgotten. I feel like sometimes people romanticize books far too much. I recently finished Eaarth by Bill McKibben and I felt like the whole book could have been nicely covered in a 10 paragraph blog post. It wasn't a bad book, not even very long, but I couldn't tell you much of anything about it other than "climate change is bad." I guess my point is you have to be pretty selective about the quality of books you read just as you need to be selective about the quality of web content you read. The plus side of the web is brevity makes the bad choices more tolerable. You don't spend days reading a bad web article hoping it might get better. (It got good reviews. It must be good. Just a few more pages...)
  - eneveu 16y ago
    There was an interesting discussion on this very subject 6 months ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/books/review/Collins-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/books/review/Collins-t.htm... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1743513 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1743513