My beginner approach to memorizing books

Memorizing Poetry, Speeches, Books
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One of my main goals of starting this journey to improve my memory is to be able to memorize the books that I read. I am less concerned with memorizing fiction, and more so interested in memorizing history/science/self-help books. Right now, I’m reading Atomic Habits by James Clear.

The following is a system that I have thought of for memorizing books. Let me know what you think.

To memorize a book:

Read it, and annotate it, circling/underlining sections of the books that you’d find important to remember. Later you’re going to return to these annotations, for now move on and finish the chapter. When you finish the chapter, go back to what you annotated, and write the idea down in your own words. Once you have this written down, you are going to start memorizing.

Create a memory palace for the book. If the book has 10 chapters, and you probably want to memorize 3-5 ideas from each chapter, then you’d need 30-50 loci. This isn’t memory verbatim, but rather “gist”.

There are two ways that I see how you can use a single memory palace per book.

  1. Use a location that you are intensely familiar with. Like your house. This way, you can create many more loci and therefore memorize many more ideas.
  2. Use a “main” memory palace you are less familiar with; therefore you’d have less loci, but this time create links at these loci that would transport you into a different room/palace. For example, the “main palace” may be a coffee shop, with 10 loci, if that, and at each place you put an image of something you know, a movie star, a friend, or a food. The movie star would transport you to one of their movies, where 10 scenes can serve as 10 loci, the friend to their house where you can place 10 more loci, and the food to your favorite restaurant which serves this food, 10 more loci. Boom, you have more loci, where you can now place images. This idea is explained well here: Gavino's Massive Memory Palace System

I would personally combine both methods, using the link method when I need to, but placing main ideas in the main, known, palace when I can. Until I get to a point where I run out of really well-known palaces, then I would use method 2 more often.

Now that you have the palace and the method, transcribe the idea that you have written in your own words into an image. How? Use creativity. If you cannot imagine a certain thing, break it down into constants and find words that can indicate these constants. Place this image in the loci. You should probably also have the first loci in the room be an indicator of what the room (chapter) is discussing. In this case, the name of the chapter works well.

Quick note: introduce the main memory palace with an image for the name of the book and an image for the author (2 more loci).

Once you have this done, go through the palace many, many times trying to transcribe image to word, and if you get stuck go back to your notes to remind yourself. A structure that can be used: next day, +3 days, +7 days, +15 days, +30 days, then every 3 months, or even less.

I know this system isn’t perfect, so I’d appreciate any suggestions/improvements :slight_smile:

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I love it. my only problem is, in every page there’s more than 3 things that i need to memorize, biology might not be easy for it has a lot of details, i would need a 100 palace that each one of them must be builded with 10 rooms… i really need help in that matter.

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Hey,
So I’ve been reading a bunch of book I want to memorize, at least part of it and here what I’m experimenting with.
I read it once to get the full understanding, then go again but this time write down everything that feel relevant for each page. I try to transform those unfo into:

  • list or process if it has a logic
  • question and answer if it is something that give me some understanding
  • quote verbatim if its something I want to keep as is

Then I store it into a palace. I decided to go wild and just store it as I go without specific construction my idea is the book has already a logic so no need to add mine for now.

Also I have trouble with linked story in a locie so I try to experiment with adding cube and triangle in the locie to construct my storie around it. Anthony Metivier made a video about it that made me want to experiment with.

Thanks for sharing your experience it help reflect on my own and try some of your good tips :slight_smile:

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Try looking at the link I attached above, there are some helpful conversations on that thread. Also, there are many threads that discuss how to read biology/history/law textbooks which may be more helpful for your situation. I’d look into those - try searching key words in the search bar. I’ll attach any if I find them helpful.

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About the Gavino’s System: The only way that it makes sense for me, is that when you put the link of other memory palace in a memory palace with less loci, is if you reuse the linked memory palace in other memory palaces without mixing up the images.

For example, you connected the movie star memory palace in the coffe shop, but you already used the movie star memory palace in another place, but since you acessed it from the coffe shop, you don’t mix the material you memorized when you acess it in the other memory palace.

Otherwise, I think it would be simpler to just use them alone, and go interconnecting them after one of the memory palaces is filled up. Like, for example, you fill the movie scene, and when it is done, make a “portal” to the coffe shop, and so on. Otherwise, I would say you are wasting 10 loci in the coffe shop, by memorizing a connection to other place, and not content. Sorry if it was a bit confusing, but I would love if you could clarify your use of this Gavino System. I have read his original post but find it very… unclear.

Other than that, I do the exactly same thing when memorizing books. Highlight what I think is important, write it down in my own words, and then memorize it.

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From my understanding, he essentially uses the original 10 loci in the coffee shop as a “portal”. In this sense, yes, it can be seen as a waste of 10 loci. However, I wouldn’t call it a waste in the sense that it would be more efficient to instead place an actual image in those 10 original spots, and then place an arbitrary portal at the end of things. I think, at least in my mind, that organization of all these rooms (movie stars, friends house, etc) in one place (the coffee shop) is more beneficial when you want to access these memories later on. This is because, as you note, once you go in and out of these loci from the original palace of the coffee shop, you can reuse them many times. That is, at least from experience, by the virtue of you starting in the coffee shop and not some other original palace and then going to the movie scene you ensure that the images you see in the movie scene will be related to the book associated with the coffee shop. If you instead wanted to use the movie scene for a different book, then perhaps consider having the original memory palace be somewhere other than the coffee shop. The idea plays on the fact that your images will remain in context of the original memory palace. I hope I’m being articulate, it’s difficult to explain. Let me know if this makes sense to you or not, I’ll try to explain better

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I am also interested in memorizing fiction; for extra intellectual points.

I memorize name of the book + Author’s name.
Then save it on my anki deck about novels to test myself.

Since fictional books are in the format of story they stick to memory better and you don’t need to pay extra effort.