It all depends on how you define "finishing" a book. I want to argue that once you tweak your definition, you'll no longer have a problem with forgetting inform

It all depends on how you define "finishing" a book. I want to argue that once you tweak your definition, you'll no longer have a problem with forgetting information from a book. This might be off topic but let me explain: On many occasions, I have witnessed people doing pushups, but at the end of their counting, they do half-assed pushups, so you could see that they are more interested in "finishing" their goal of 10, 15 or 20 repetitions than actually doing the exercise correctly (doing the exercise correctly could end up with them doing only 5 correct pushups) Reading books is the same, most people are only interested in the idea of reading books, like the idea of doing sport, to "keep healthy", but don't actually enjoy the journey. So people would set arbitrary rules of "2 or 3 books a month" for example. So here's what I do: - I changed my definition of "finishing a book" to "never". I stopped trying to read 2 books a month because it no longer has any meaning in my system, but also, no matter my progress through a book, it doesn't matter at all. Never finishing a book is actually true: a book chapter can send me in a journey over the internet looking for more information on that particular subject, or re-think about the previous chapter because now I have new insight, etc. So really, I never finish my books and it's exactly why it's cool. It's like swimming because you like it VS swimming to reach the other side. Finally, I don't remember every word of what I have read in the past years, but it sure shaped who I am today, the choices I made, the interests I have, etc. So it's ok to forget, what matters is the journey and what you get out of it, a book never quits your reading list once it gets there, unless you only care about counting your "done" list.