This post isn’t directed towards you or any part of any population. It’s directed towards me. I don’t think you need to write book reports on the books you read. I think I need to.
I’m not going to be writing these to get any kind of traffic or get people to buy books through my Amazon affiliation (although, why wouldn’t I link to them?).
I’m writing these because this is the best way I can remember what I read without rereading books.
Why write book reports?
The other night, I finished Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier. It was a fantastic book. It’s now littered with highlights, notes, and brackets.
All of my books are.
I do this because it helps me find passages that I love. Direct quotes I can’t recall perfectly from memory.
I remembered everything about “Rework” after I read it.
I went to put it away on the bookshelf and pick up the next book to read. I picked up and put down books multiple times trying to make a decision. Finally, I settled on a book I bought in the Columbus Airport. One Thing by Gary Keller and held it in my left hand.
I glanced over to a different shelf and noticed The Master Key to Riches by Napoleon Hill. It was a book my business partner had recommneded to me months ago. I had started reading it but never finished.
I could tell because I had made highlights and notes a quarter of the way through.
I picked it up with my other hand and opened it on top of The One Thing I was carrying.
As I read through my highlights trying to figure out where I left off, something mortifying occurred to me.
I couldn’t remember a damn thing!
I’d highlighted sentences and bracketed paragraphs but had no recollection of the surrounding context.
I do remember this book being a terrible read and I can admit it probably bored me. But before I let myself give up on questioning why I couldn’t remember anything about this book, I looked at some of my other “favorite books” I’ve read.
Two of which being Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and William Zinsser’s On Writing Well.
I remembered a few things from those books but I couldn’t pull any quotes out of my head. On top of that, I couldn’t even remember the different topics On Writing Well covered.
This terrified me. I’m not going to read books over and over again until I get them drilled down. I should be able to read them once and remember most of the key details.
I had an idea
Recently, I had started taking Lean Six Sigma Engineering classes to get my green belt in the field. I’m taking it seriously because I care about what it teaches.
I prove that I care about the subject by the immense amount of notes I’ve taken. Often more notes than what the instructor says or writes.
I’ve noticed my rentention to a lot of these topics has been better than it’s ever been. Including high school and college. I don’t even have to look at my notes. I just remember everything and I’ve been scoring 100% on all my tests.
I figured if I wrote about a book after I read it, it would help me retain a lot more information. Even if it’s just a few more bits and pieces that I was remembering before.
Most people already knew taking notes and writing about things helped retain more information. I’ve never been a note taker and all of that seemed anecdotal to me.
It wasn’t until Lean Six Sigma that I realized just how much I was retaining.
How do I even write book reports?
I haven’t done this since middle school. So I guess the best thing to do is write it as if it were a blog post.
I’m going to break it down and structure it in the same format I always write:
- Introduction
- Why this topic is important
- Specific things about the topic
- Applying the topic to real life
- Summary
I hope I’m not the only one that gets benefit out of writing these. It wouldn’t feel like a complete waste if that were the case… but a waste nevertheless.
So this is how my book reports (book reviews) will be structured in the coming posts:
- Introduction
- Synopsis
- Notable Topics
- Topic #1
- Topic #2
- Topic #3
- How I can apply what I read
- Who I would recommend this book to
I hope this helps
I hope this helps me remember more of what I’ve read in the past. It’s not that I’ve completely forgot. It’s just I need to flip through the book to job my memory.
I don’t wnat to have to jog it for every postive detail I’ve read. I just want to recall it at will or whenever the situation calls for it.
But I also want these book reviews to serve you well too. I want them to be interesting and pique your interest without you not feeling like you don’t need to read the books. As long as you think they’re a good fit for you.
If you have any recommendations for me, put them in the comments below and say a little about why you like that book.