I read 100 books per year. This is how I remember the learnings in them.

I often hear from people around me that they enjoy reading, but they have a hard time remembering the content of the books. I even had a friend who struggles to remember if he read a book at all, let alone what it was about.

So, I thought it might be useful to share some of my tips for reading (and remembering).

1. Read about the same topic from different sources

The best way to remember details about one topic is to read it from many sources. For example, if I am reading about the Vienna Secession at the start of the 20th century, I don’t remember a lot. Then, when I read another book about art movements in the past 100 hundred years, I consolidate my knowledge of things I have read in the first one. When reading the third one, I already know a lot about the topic, so I am simultaneously solidifying my knowledge and learning something new.

2. Notes are good, but useless if you don’t read them repeatedly

When I am reading a nonfiction book, I take notes. Short sentences of something that I find interesting, or that I didn’t know before. Not a lot of them, for example, a book of 400 pages will yield around 15 to 30 notes.

When I find a lot of interesting things, I take a photo of the whole page.

As I said, notes are worthless if you don’t go over them from time to time. I read them right after I have finished a book, and then after a couple of days again. After a few months, I would pick it up again, and only then I would feel that I have solidified my knowledge about the book. Along with notes, I read the pages I took the photo of.

What is also helpful is that since I have a bunch of them in paper form, I get to look at them when I am around the house, picking them randomly and trying to remember what I know about them. I found out that just looking at the book spines/titles (sorted in my library) from time to time helps me with remembering their content. Weird stuff.

3. When listening to audiobooks, I remember less

I have found that listening to audiobooks doesn’t help me remember them as well as when I read them on my Kindle, or, even better, in paper form. For me, the paper form wins - I think it helps me

4. Talk about the book after you read it

This one is quite unorthodox, I would say, but it helps me tremendously to remember the content of the book. After I finish a book, I paraphrase the book to friends or whomever that happens to be near me. That way, I am presenting the book, and speaking out loud helps me remember it better. I try to find someone who I think will be interested in the book’s content and might learn something new.

Be careful here not to drown the other party with details. A high overview of the book works well.

5. Write

Write about books and topics you have read. Write book reviews, both for yourself and the public. Writing about stuff does a great deal for remembering them. The day I finish reading some book, I write a couple of sentences about it in my notes, in a form like this:

Number of the book (for that year). Author. My rating. Date finished. A couple of sentences about the book.

Then, from time to time (especially at the end of the year), I go through the list and reflect on the books there. I read the notes for each book as well.

6. Read

No way! But yeah, by reading, and by reading a lot, you strengthen your reading muscle. Which makes reading (and remembering) a new book easier. In a nutshell, reading more helps me read more, and I have got to 98 books for 2021 from 65 books in 2019.

Hope that some of this might help you.