It’s hard to remember - unless you have photographic memory. For the rest of us mortals we’re reduced to taking notes - which make books feel like textbooks! No

It’s hard to remember - unless you have photographic memory. For the rest of us mortals we’re reduced to taking notes - which make books feel like textbooks! Not a good way to retain information and actually works against you enjoying reading - you called it lazy but the act of trying to memorize when your life doesn’t depend on it doesn’t work. Grades mattered in school hence forced memorization. Here is what I do - not sure where I picked it up. While reading I try to lock on interesting concepts that is worth remembering… instead of taking mental or otherwise notes - I compose an article about it. Think of it as a blog post exploring the idea with personal experiences sprinkled on it - I put tags on it and references the book as footnotes. I never post the articles anywhere - it’s just personal. Think of them as storyboards. I might share with a friend or two after refining it. Now you have a database of tags with stories that link to your reading. I often look up tags because of unrelated thought or reading and it’s takes for an interesting discovery. This works great for me compared to book summary - a chapter, paragraph or even a sentence in a book can be the biggest takeaway and result into a subject or topic of interest that leads you to more reading and the cycle continues. As a side note - even if you don’t retain information as in real memory bank. Ideas from books make love and make babies in your mind somehow. Keep at it.