Q&A: Remembering Books
Remembering Books
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I’m a young person without a philosophical education who fell in love with philosophy בעקבות “God Plays with Dice.” Right now I’m moving from one introductory book to another and enjoying it a lot, and with God’s help I hope to build a fairly solid foundation and move on to the quartet and beyond, hopefully managing to get through them.
The problem is that from the books I read I remember the general outlines but not the details, and every time I try to recall a full line of an argument or refutation that I read, I need to go back to the book itself and remind myself what exactly happened there. And many times when I read something in one book that I had read two months earlier in another book, I find myself learning it all over again.
Assuming I don’t have any particular memory problem (I haven’t checked), I thought maybe I should summarize the important points for myself on a sheet of paper each time and put it inside the book, but I’m worried that this will really lengthen the reading time and make me despair. So what is recommended to do? And in general, what is the proper way to read (and remember) non-fiction / analytical books?
Answer
Hello.
I don’t really have advice. I’ll just say that this is a common and reasonable phenomenon. You don’t remember everything. If you summarize things for yourself, it will help you remember better even if you never go back to your summaries. Certainly if you review the material. It will also give you a more focused framework to remember, whereas right now you’re expected to remember everything that is written. Usually, over time, things accumulate and integrate with one another into a fuller picture, and then they also become absorbed in you better.