Remembering details in books you've read – does it matter?

[loreta]

I don't remember who said that when we read a book or re-read it, we create that book again in the company of the author. It's as if we were writing it anew, because between the first and subsequent readings, we've changed, we're no longer the same person. It's a question of a new understanding. Deepening.

Every 5 years, I reread the 5 volumes of Virginia Woolf's diary. And each time I'm surprised to read things I'd completely forgotten. How come I forgot this or that? But at the same time I understand Virginia Woolf a little better, I re-discover her, I rediscover myself by reading her every five years. This is fun.

I'm not the same person I was when I first read Laura. That's why it's important to re-read certain books, certain authors, and re-read them as if for the first time.

The brain can't remember everything. What's more, we're constantly bombarded by information. And we're in front of the computer all the time. In the old days, people were taught to memorize, it's a discipline. Not any more. It's a question of concentration too, of attention, another discipline.

As an anecdote, there's this story I once read on a Russian specialist about Tolstoi's War and Peace. He said he'd read the novel 15 times and that just after reading it 15 times he was beginning to really understand it.

Rereading authors offers a great pleasure of finesse in understanding, a pleasure of being with someone again who allows us to go a little further, hand in hand, it's superb. The brain starts working again, and so does the memory. It's a new adventure, a new landscape, a new journey.

 

[nicklebleu]

Same here - often wished I had a photographic memory. Having said that, it probably comes at a price (as everything does) - forgetting is an important task for the brain. I would argue that most people unable to forget would struggle with that, just in another way that we ‘others’ do - maybe Laura can chime in with her perspective. It is certainly an interesting conundrum.

What I found is that the more you know, the easier it is to retain not only the gist of things, but also more details, because they fit into a map, or a landscape of other related items, so they are connected to other items you already know, which makes it easier to remember them. If you read a book about a topic where you know very little, I think for the same reason it is more difficult to retain details even if the overarching concept is understood.

There is the old saying that you’ll know that you have understood something when you are able to explain it to someone else and the other gets it. But I think it works backwards too - when you explain something to someone else, you will be less likely to forget that.

In some sense it’s a bit like the difference between thinking a thing and saying it out loud - it always strikes me how it feels different, even though the idea is the same - it feels more ‘real’ or ‘tangible’ or …

Not sure whether or not this all makes sense …

 

[Cosmos]

I think that is probably a universal "problem" for all people, to one extent or the other. The problem probably exists on a scale, meaning, that some are better at it than others, in general. It also seems to depend on many different circumstances around the time when you read and/or recall something, like: concentration, calmness, emotional and/or personal impact of what you read etc. Which is all subject to constant change.

Having said that, I think there are probably ways to get better at it with practice, while you probably can't expect to ever fully understand and/or remember everything you read on a conscious level. I, for one, have noticed that there were times in my life where I had real and big problems of remembering something I have read, to the extent that I continually forgot what I have read from sentence to sentence! I have noticed that you can get much better at it with practice. There are also apparently schools of thought and learning where people are able to "remember" and/or "memorize" long passages or even whole books for a whole lifetime, word for word, and then can transmit that memorized text to the next generation, pretty much exactly, as the original. And so on.

I also suspect that there might be a "left brain" bias in regard to the idea that you have only remembered and/or integrated theoretical knowledge if you can recall and/or articulate verbally exactly what you have read. It seems to me that there might be much more to having "remembered" and/or "memorized" something, than what you can recall on a conscious and/or verbal level.

 

[NOONE]

OK, je suis comme la plupart des gens, je reste toujours étonnée d'avoir l'impression de lire un nouveau livre que j'ai déjà lu.
cependant, j'ai appris qu'il faut toujours relire les livres "importants". En effet, les cheminements de nos pensées ou de notre conscience étant différents de la première lecture, que ces livres nous apprennent toujours quelque chose (que l'on se souvient ou non des détails).

Et puis, un livre ne donne pas toute sa connaissance à la première lecture. Tant que le livre donne des connaissances ou bien permet de relier les points, alors, il me semble qu'il convient de relire l'ouvrage.

Tout cela est mon point de vue, bien sûr.

________

OK, I'm like most people, I'm always surprised when I feel like I'm reading a new book that I've already read.
However, I've learned that you should always reread "important" books. This is because the pathways of our thoughts or consciousness are different from the first reading, so these books always teach us something (whether we remember the details or not).

Besides, a book doesn't impart all its knowledge on first reading. As long as the book provides knowledge or connects the dots, then I think it's worth re-reading.

All this is my point of view, of course.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

 

[SOTTREADER]

I'm not sure what the benefits are of remembering sentences or how things are written verbatim. In the book "make it stick" learning is all about understanding the underlying concepts and so I think you must distill the information. Of course, there are certain things that are simply facts that must be known and so these need to be remembered as they are.

Again, from the same book, I came to learn that most people who are true memory champions use techniques and it's in the perfection of these techniques that they are able to remember A LOT.

What Is a Mnemonic?​

What Is a Mnemonic?

👉 A mnemonic is a technique or device for remembering information. Mnemonics can be made up of words, mental pictures, body movements, physical objects, or just about anything.

artofmemory.com

A mnemonic is a technique or device for remembering information. Mnemonics can be made up of words, mental pictures, body movements, physical objects, or just about anything that can help you remember information.

For example, a simple mnemonic to remember which side of your body is the left and which is the right involves extending your thumbs and looking at the back of your hands. The hand that looks like the letter “L” is the left side.

Memory palace

Not all mnemonics involve using letters. The memory palace technique is another kind of mnemonic that use spatial locations to keep information in order.

For example, if you wanted to remember a shopping list, you could imagine each item on your shopping list interacting with a location on your body.

Working from the top of your head to your feet, you could create 10-20 locations where you would imagine pictures of the things you want to remember. So if the first location is the top of your head, and the second location is your eyes, and the first two shopping items are carrots and milk, you could imagine carrots on the top of your head, tangled in your hair. You could imagine pouring milk on your eyes, and so on, placing each shopping list item at a different location on your body.
Then, to recall the items, you would mentally walk through the locations of your memory journey and see which item from your list is at that location.

If the first location is the top of your head, you would mentally look into that memory palace location and see what you were balancing there (carrots). Then you would move to the second location (eyes) and see what was happening there (pouring milk). The more memory palace locations you create, the more information you can store.

Etc

Such techniques are used by medical students for example who have to learn and be able to remember A LOT to pass their exams.

It's worth remembering that when we read books here, we are doing it slightly differently to how for example a medical student would read a medical book. We are almost doing it at leisure but a medical student certainly wouldn't read at leisure if the idea is for him / her to then be able to retrieve the info later. So worth noting that.

Finally, it's worth noting that you can't remember key details from a book without testing yourself - actually writing or talking back to yourself and then checking to see what you got right, what important bits you missed etc and basically going through that cycle of retrieval, spacing etc.

 

[Mytja]

Going with that saying, often used on the Forum, that the devil is in the details, then it depends on what your goal/aim is when reading certain text.

For example, in a PS to one of his recent blog entries, Ark recounted a scene where he found Laura sitting in the laundry room reading Wave 8. What should then we, the mere mortals to think if someone like Laura with nearly photographic memory in her almost nonexistent spare time is (re)reading her own book?

I think this is a very common experience, as it's almost impossible to recall all the details from something you've read, and this is the case even with shorter articles, let alone books. I would say that not being able to remember the details doesn't take away from the effort of trying to understand something, as it's a dynamic process that builds on itself, always leading to the next step towards even greater understanding.

Also, a book doesn't seem to be a closed whole with a fixed meaning and which you'll be able to understand fully from the get-go. If you read the same book 5 years from now, you will bring to it new experiences (from personal life, other readings and so on), and you'll see things that you couldn't see previously. And the same would apply to other areas.

For wanting to remember more, here's something that could maybe be of use.

Ditto.

If the aim/goal is Understanding, then it doesn't really matter much how much of the details we forgot or still remember, me thinks. As the Understanding is a function of Being, i.e. in a way proportional to it, there's only a certain amount of it we can assimilate at a given time and point/level of our development from the Knowledge acquired/gained by reading a book for example. Not remembering all the details won't change or diminish the amount of understanding acquired, if it was real Understanding. And similarly with the opposite, remembering many details won't provide greater and deeper Understanding until the Being that can assimilate it is not grown a bit larger.

 

[Seppo Ilmarinen]

I think instead of remembering all the details, it's more important to understand the big picture, connect the dots and create overall knowledge base, that will help and guide us with our choices in order to navigate this reality, which is saturated with false information. A lot of this learning is probably unconscious, and connected to our Being, which seem to have feedback loop with the type of knowledge (i.e true or false) we acquire.

For example I can remember that Operation Ajax was CIA/MI6 covert operation in 1953 where the West ousted Iran's PM Mohammed Mossadegh from power via manufactured protest campaigns and replaced him with Shah Reza Pahlavi, because Mossadegh had nationalized Iranian oil reserves and had become a threat to Western geopolitical interests.

That's most of what I remember about that specific case without re-reading, but it's probably enough needed to connect it with the loooong list of other similar historical cases in order to build an understanding of how US as a current global hegemony has operated post WW2, and what kind of geopolitical realities there are.

Further incorporating this knowledge has helped to navigate (together with our network) more recent events, such as 2014 Maidan coup all the way to current war in Ukraine, since understanding how geopolitics work makes it possible and easier to root out the propaganda and lies.

Same time there are people who may have excellent memory and cognitive machinery, perhaps filled with impressive amount of details, but they view recent history as isolated, fragmented events, unable to connect these to wider context because their core beliefs (such as "we are the good guys") may oppose the obvious conclusions, or they make conclusions that are opposite of what's going on in reality! (just look all the armchair warrior nafo-types commenting the Ukraine war).

So information or memorizing itself is not enough, but there can be deeper learning process going on behind the scenes, even if some details may eventually be forgotten, as long as there's this positive feedback loop, OSIT.

Maybe good analogy would be how music is learned. For example memorizing hundreds of individual songs is most likely only temporary (for most people), yet there can be wide range of acquired knowledge (e.g technical improvement, understanding of melody, harmony etc) from the process that would be incorporated to overall musicianship (i.e Being), even if many of those individual songs would likely needed to be reviewed before performing again.

 

[aragorn]

Thanks for all the great replies! Good to know that I’m not alone with this “problem”.

Maybe good analogy would be how music is learned. For example memorizing hundreds of individual songs is most likely only temporary (for most people), yet there can be wide range of acquired knowledge (e.g technical improvement, understanding of melody, harmony etc) from the process that would be incorporated to overall musicianship (i.e Being), even if many of those individual songs would likely needed to be reviewed before performing again.

Well put! I agree that it’s more important that by all that reading we enhance our discernment and pattern recognition. To come to think of it, I find that my ability to judge the credibility, a hidden angle, and various propagandistic tricks has indeed got better. It saves time not having to read all things that you come across as you in that “blink” moment can quickly see what’s probably going on. So, maybe reading all those books has done something good, after all.

 

[T.C.]

Seems to me that for most people, the brain remembers what it uses every - because it must be important if you use it every day - and everything else gets either forgotten or put on a back shelf in the dusty closet.

If you had to talk about diet and health every day, or ponerology, or UFO incidents of the 20tb century, or the flaws in the theory of evolution, etc., etc., you’d be able to remember it all.

I was a professional musician for 10 years, and after just a few years of not playing, there’s loads of music theory I’ve forgotten. But I’m sure it would all come back and be easily accessible if I had to use it every day again.

 

[Musicinventor]

If I could remember half of everything I’ve ever read I would probably be a freaking genius!

I was a professional musician for 10 years, and after just a few years of not playing, there’s loads of music theory I’ve forgotten. But I’m sure it would all come back and be easily accessible if I had to use it every day again.

@T.C. I get that, big time! If it hadn’t been for teaching and composing I would have forgot more than I did. Fwiw… don’t let it slip away as it’s much too important to who, and what we are, and what we stand for!

 

[JGeropoulas]

View attachment 88659
Detail: "Jimmy climbs over the fence to retrieve his precious ball."
Event: "Jimmy gets attacked by a bulldog."
Concept: "Knowledge protects, ignorance endangers."

Which one do you always remember?

Great thread! In the face of the daunting reading list, a professor in grad school reassured us that most books aimed to convey just a few key concepts. A concept--just like a picture--is worth a thousand words.

 

[Anya112003]

I constantly reread books from our booklist. Sometimes an article or news cast triggers the desire to reread a book. Other times I look at my bookcase and grab whatever tickles my fancy. I usually gain some new understanding .

 

[jcsmalz]

This is something that has often bothered me because they say that if you cannot explain a concept or topic then you don't truly understand it.

My friend who introduced me to the wave 21 years ago says that even though you don't remember, the information is in there somewhere. Seems like a subconscious function.

I think of it similarly to how Gurdjieff describes building centers in that if you read material of a certain relation; when you first start out you have no reference point but as you read more and more of the material you start to form connections in your mind. Essentially you're establishing where you stand within the forest leading to hopefully discovering a path. You may begin to remember more and more detail and especially the important ones.

Personally, information regarding natural health stick in my mind really well and even more so when I practice the supplements regimens, DMSO, magnesium, sulphur crystals, selenium, tumeric absorption is boosted by black pepper... That kind of thing. That little list is all thanks to SOTT.

I'm rarely able to take my own advice but don't be hard on yourself and enjoy reading the information as you read it!!