Ask HN: How do you retain knowledge from books?

[gashaw]

I sometimes wonder if reading all these books is worth it, given I seem to remember so little from them.

Other than rereading what do you do to retain knowledge from books you value?

[WheelsAtLarge]

I think most reader have this problem. The problem is that most of us just read and hope the information sticks. The trick is to not just read but to immediately recall and reflect on what you read. You also need to write down a summary of what you read. Yes, this will slow down the amount of books you read but you will retain much more.

[underthensun]

Yep. Read, write down, try to connect as much things as possible to make easier to retrieve it later

[jolmg]

Spaced repetition[1], maybe?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition

[gashaw]

I'm already rereading the most valuable books and it does help to retain their knowledge. I guess doing spaced repetition every x time would help even more. I feel that rereading and to a larger extent spaced repetition are very wasteful.

[airbreather]

You need to be genuinely interested in what you are reading.

[gashaw]

I am. About 70% are technical books related to my job (SWE) and the rest are combination of textbooks and popular science in fields that I find very interesting.

If for some reason I lose interest in a book then I just stop reading it and don't mind if I don't remember anything from it.