Read Real Books To Remember More
Physical Objects Are Mnemonic Aids
Table of Contents
On Looking For Memory Palaces
One of the greatest difficulties that new mnemonists struggle with is finding palaces for their memories. It’s not uncommon to find neophytes cooking up elaborate systems to collect and organize places that they’ve been to that they can eventually use when structuring their knowledge.
This isn’t anything new, of course. Hundreds of years ago, the Renaissance lawyer Peter Ravenna bragged about having over 100,000 loci, or places, in his memory palace.
My experiences with the antipalace would caution against building anything that vast, but Ravenna’s claims show the long-standing tradition of mnemonists scouting locations for their memories.
Why I Use Books As Memory Palaces
I’m lazy, of course, and have skirted the need for finding locations by simply turning the books I read into memory palaces. I just use the cover as a table around which my mnemonic imagery is organized. Easy peasy.
This only works for physical books, however.
Virtual palaces, the ones that only exist inside your mind, have significantly less sticking power than real places and real objects.
Last year, my memory practice was hobbled by the fact that I was only reading e-books. The moment I switched to physical books, it was like my brain put on thirty pounds of muscle. It was like I had freed up a lot of cognitive bandwidth.
Usually, brain fog settles in during my studies after a certain point, but by reading physical books, I had more mental stamina, and that extra stamina made a huge difference in my ability to build lasting memory palaces. My prior attempts worked, but they required much more effort.
The Book as a Memory Object
The idea of using a book (specifically, the book cover) as a memory palace might seem strange, but it’s nothing new. Lynne Kelly’s Memory Code talks about a variety of memory objects, like khifu strings and lukasa boards.
A physical book can be turned into a kind of lukasa board, even without embedding physical cues on the cover.
The fact that real books exist in time and space imbues them with certain mnemonic qualities that virtual, electronic books do not possess.
The real is much easier to remember than the imagined, and if you want to remember what you read, it is fairly trivial to create a memory palace around the book you’re reading if it’s in your hands.
Tangible Memory Palaces Work Better
I now rarely use traditional memory palaces of places I’ve been and prefer to just use books themselves. However, if I was going to use a physical location, I wouldn’t use one from my memory, but the actual place I’m in at the time I’m constructing my memory palace.
The reason I have such an easy time building palaces from the books I read is because I’m building those palaces while the book is in my hands. I’m not relying on my memory alone. My physical senses help inform the palace I’m building in ways that aren’t possible from memory alone.
If I ever decide to use a location for a memory palace again, I would want to be at the location itself while I was constructing that palace. I’d only build a memory palace in a park if I was physically in the park in question. I wouldn’t do it from memory. I would also call on every single sensory cue I could to make it a richer mnemonic experience. I’d figure out a way to include novel food and aromas into the palace-construction process.
My experiences with physical book mnemonics have made me very wary of constructing palaces strictly from imagination, even if I’ve been to the places I’m imagining. That difference between e-books and physical books also helped me understand that this wasn’t just preference, but something deeper about how memory latches onto real objects. Yes, palaces built from memory work, but building them from direct experience requires less effort and has more stickiness.
The reason physical book mnemonics work better for me than the imagined palaces ever did is because my palaces are anchored in real experiences as they are happening. In other words, when I’m building my palace around a real physical object that’s in my hands, I’m engaging with all my senses and not just their internal representations. I’m combining mental imagery with direct experience.
Hydrants and Hoses
It really is enough to just use the book as a space around which you organize its contents, because the book is a real object you are directly experiencing, and the mental imagery you’re creating is anchoring that real experience.
Imagine the physical book as a fire hydrant that contains existence itself, and the mental imagery as a hose that connects to it so you can shape and blast existence. It’s not a perfect analogy, but I hope it gets a certain point across: reality is what gives your memories weight.
Mental imagery is just a hose powered by your experiences, and if the images aren’t sticking, it’s often because the fire hydrant is dry. The more you call on real experiences driven by your actual senses, the better the flow.