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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4067 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 29, 2023

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So, how do you refresh your memory of the books you've read? Do you have a set process or use a third party app?

It depends.

For fiction, I mostly don't. I mostly focus on the language, the plot, the characters, etc. If there's a particularly good line or segment, I'll copy it to my quote file in Obsidian.

For non-fiction, I collect fragments into Obsidian. For paper books, I use google lens for OCR and copy/paste into a dedicated Obsidian file. For ebooks, I highlight stuff in moonreader, then export it all when I'm done. I do a little bit of clean up using sed, then put everything into Obsidian.

Occasionally, I review my notes, bolding or highlighting+bolding fragments that seem the most valuable. (This is lightweight BASB). If something is sound tactical advice, I'll write down a little checklist at the top of the file. If a group of ideas seems extremely valuable, I'll write a short summary so that I can refresh my memory quickly whenever, even when I'm using my phone.

If I want something to become muscle memory, like vim commands, I make a few cards for anki. I started this just recently.

I've been doing the notetaking for about a year. It's proven very lightweight--I've probably spent maybe 2 hours total on cleaning/organizing/tagging--and it's proven useful for both writing as well as refreshing my memory about specific bits and pieces.

I reference it in discussions or share the best excerpts with people to spark a discussion (mostly here, /r/slowhistory and /r/Irishhistory) I've burned some excerpts into my head this way because they always seem to be relevant.

If I don't know a book well yet often I'll read something online and it'll trigger an urge to scrounge through my bookshelf to find the particular book and particular page that I have a feeling says the thing I vaguely remember. Usually these are physical books but I ctrl-f'd my way through a few Hayek books once because I was certain that he had used the term 'Anglo-Saxon countries' (iirc the argument concerned the 'Anglo-Saxon traditions' in some Republican manifesto being a novel term that some thought was a dogwhistle).

Ideally I'd write proper reviews of each book and discuss them online, but I haven't developed the ability to regularly produce those yet.

I like to use post it flags that stick out the edges. I then highlight the section. I have a system of color coding that I've developed that I really enjoy.

It's also quite interesting to see how the good books end up full of flags sticking out the side.

For non-fiction, I just take notes and save the key quotes in Obsidian. We forget things easily, so I think it pays off.

Oftentimes I just go on TVtropes, which has the most memorable bits catalogued quite comprehensively.

Not high-quality analysis, but reminds me enough to refresh things.

If its a NON-FICTION book, that's a harder ask. Occasionally there's good youtube videos available.

It's be really nice to have an online collaborative website where we can highlight sentences in books per thematic/criterion of highlight.

We have so much content in this world and the signal to noise ratio is so low, that's the usual ineptia I guess

I don't know if Kindle still does this, but it used to underline in dotted lines commonly highlighted lines in books.

Yeah it still does that.

For large classics I often read digitally, whether on Kindle or a specialized app (the Bible) that allow highlighting. So I read a section or the whole book, then go back through and read highlights I took throughout.

I don't. If it's not sufficiently interesting for me to remember, I don't see any reason to force it. If I ever need it again, I can just open the book again.

I make notes and quote selected portions I want to remember. In my experience writing about what you've read is a pretty good method of forcing retention, and if you forget anyway you can just return to your notes.

I don't usually bother to be honest, I just rely on half-remembering then googling the details if I need them. But I hear great things about Anki if you actually want to memorize more stuff.

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