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Comment on Ask HN: How do you synthesize books that you read?

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I have a method that works really well.

I only read books on kindle, and i use kindle highlights. After I finish a book, I usually wait about 1 month or so, then I download the kindle highlights and turn them in to Anki flash cards and review them every day.

The type of cards i make are

1. vocab i didnt know 2. interesting paragraphs 3. other examples using cloze

SMS works, and this method definitely works, but it's a lot of work. One really good thing that comes out of this is even if I cant recall exactly what I wanted, I always can remember the book it came from and the kindle highlights give me the page number to go read it again.

My approach is similar! However, my cards are more made for spaced reading than for spaced repetition studying. As such, each card just corresponds to a highlight.

(Also replace Kindle with Google play books)

does your method work well ?

Anki for the win! There's nothing like it if you want to retain large amounts of detailed knowledge.

I guess this isn't applicable for technical books, i.e. you don't read them on a kindle?

I do not read them on kindle, but it works with technical concepts. Check this out

http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html

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