How to improve retention when reading books?

What then is the purpose for try to memorize these concepts?
School is based on the concept that you memorize stuff just so that you pass your exam. but Life is not like that.

The things you need to know you know when the time is right, and your memory coupled with intuition will get things done.

Any other knowing is vain cause there is a boast is the knowing itself and no other life purpose.

I’m similar to you. Enjoy reading but I find it very difficult to recall the details etc
For me personally, I think I dont read properley. Sometimes I think I’m scanning as I read exceptionally quickly.
I observed and talked to my friends about this, and how they read. Some were similar, but many say they really took the time to digest the information on the pages, sometimes re-reading it. These guys wre the ones who were always able to recall the details, even years later.
Everytime I pick up a book I think I should make more of an effort to read slowly, but it’s a hard skill to re-adjust.
I’m still working on it.

Sometimes with fiction books in particular, taking your time to read is important if you want to retain a lot of the information. For example, my house mate can read a novel over breakfast, and retains very little of the story in the long term, while I may take a good 5 days to get through the same book, but I will remember the story almost as if it were a movie, or my own dream. So i guess if you take the time to visualize everything you read, you are processing the information on a deeper level than if you are just skimming through the main ideas of a chapter.

One important thing I have learnt in my studies (psychology), is that you will remember something much more effectively if you self generate the information…maybe after each chapter you read jot down the main events, and the main characters.

And of course if you can relate the story to your own life on an emotional level this helps with retention….read the book as if its happening to you… empathize with the characters. It works, think about most of the movies you remember for years and years, they have something you personally relate to, and are emotionally charged, its the same with books.

Also finding chapter summaries, or discussion forums online after you have read the book helps…thinking about the material in a different way will help memory too.

I don’t know if any of that helps, I feel like I have written down what you probably already know…

My memory is lousy and I forget 90% of what I’ve read soon after putting the book down. I have no idea how to improve my memory. Mnenonics are useless to me because I can’t even remember the things that are meant to help me remember… !

I write down everything that will need to be recalled later.

In order to retain information, I identify with one of the characters and focus on picturing myself as a character of the story, a movie in my head so to speak. This however doesn’t work if the book sucks.

I have outstanding reading retention for non-fiction; it’s hard to know how much of it is my approach, and how much of it is just innate, but I can try to share what makes it work for me:

1. Be highly self-motivated. If you’re curious and ready to learn the material, you will learn it really quickly. Read the sections that you find most interesting because these are the ones that you are most intellectually ready for. If it’s boring, skip to a different section, or put the book down, and come back to it when you no longer find that section boring.
2. Be well-rested. Get enough sleep; don’t try to read dense non-fiction books when you’re tired or behind on your sleep.
3. Have adequate lighting. I find it’s often easiest for me to read tough books in natural light.
4. Find your best times of day. For me, the best time is the morning. The second best time is early evening and early afternoon. Late afternoon is pretty useless for me, and I use it to do easier tasks that require little concentration.
5. Take breaks. It’s simply impossible to concentrate indefinitely. When your attention is wandering or you feel like you’re not absorbing stuff, take a 15 minute break. Brew a cup of tea, snack, stretch, go outdoors, chat with people if that helps you unwind. And take long breaks too: if you’re reading a book every day, and you’re getting stuck, take a few days or even a week away from it, then come back. You may find that your mind has digested some of the material in the meanwhile.
6. Don’t expect it to be easy. Some stuff is tough to learn. I have a master’s in math and another in statistics; I have a few books where I’d spend hours on a single page; that’s just the nature of the subject. Most subjects aren’t that hard, but the point is, if you expect it to come easily to you, you’ll be let down. Even people who seem to come across as geniuses often are spending a lot more time reading things than removed observers realize.

It also could be that you just don’t learn that well from books. Some subjects, like computer programming, I cannot learn effectively from books. I learn this mainly by doing. Other subjects I learn best by talking to people.

Learning and retention is enhanced by studying/reading just before bedtime.

‘Feeding’ one’s sub-conscious and allowing, through sleep, the information to be assimilated and stored more efficiently. (sp?)

First, get off the internet. The nature of the world wide web is to jump from one subject to another quickly and promptly discard the information once it is no longer needed. Try to recall a blog post you read on your favorite blog from 3 months ago to see what I mean (you WILL remember a book you read 3 months ago though). I’m speaking from personal experience and the internet is a habit I’m trying hard to break.

Second, write a review. In an attempt to better retain books I read, I started a book blog and write reviews for it (I also post them on LibraryThing and other places). I take notes while I read and make sure that my blog posts include a very short summary of the book and my thoughts on particular ideas/themes that appealed to me. I’ve found that just looking over these reviews quickly gives me the gist of the book and the most important feelings I had about it.

Read How to Read a Book , by Mortimer Adler. Many public libraries have this book.

Here’s an excerpt: How to mark a book

If you really wanna to memorize the contents, you should ask questions about the book, once you can get the answer by not looking into the books, you remembered them. Retention depends also on how much it interested you.