Remembering Your Reads!
While I was watching my daily (and high) dose of YouTube videos one day as I usually did, I stumbled across a YouTube video by Jenn Im. She randomly mentioned current YouTubers she was watching herself, and talked about someone named Ali Abdaal, who posted a video on how to remember the books you have read. Jenn further explained how this led her to write small book reports following a template on books she had read, which dramatically helped her with remembering more of her reads. This piqued my interest, as I began to realize that I pretty much remembered VERY few books out of the many, many books I've read throughout my lifetime. Sure, I can recall if I've read the book or not and I know the general gist of it, but I don't feel like I can remember that many books extremely well.
So, I decided to watch the video about remembering books myself, from Ali Abdaal's channel. (I'll put the link below!) He mentioned the different levels of remembering what you have read that he created, from Level 1 "The Muggle" all the way to Level 7, "Dumbledore." He fully describes each of the levels in the video, but for time's sake I'll just describe Level 5, the level I decided to do (as well as the one Jenn seemed to do). Level 5, "Dumbledore's Army," involves book templates to fill out for both non-fiction and fiction books after you've finished reading a book.
The fiction book template that he presented looked like this:
I wanted give this a shot with a book I had currently read, The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey. Here's what I filled the template out with to help myself remember and to give you guys a glimpse of this book!
Book title: The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey
What the book's about: The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey is a sci-fi dystopian book, and the sequel to The 5th Wave. Cassie, Ben, Ringer, and their friends are in the midst of the fifth and final wave of the methods The Others have used to try and exterminate the whole of the human race. While trying to stay alive and hidden, Cassie is determined to find Evan, an Other who helped nurse her back to health and who she's fallen in love with. Relationships, death, and betrayals arise in this book told in the perspectives of multiple characters including Cassie, Ringer, Poundcake, and more.
How I discovered it: I read this book mostly because I read the first book of the series before, The 5th Wave. The previous book had ended off a bit abruptly, and I wanted to see what would continue to happen in the next book. This was one of the series that I had access to in my house, so I decided to give it a shot.
General thoughts: I thought that The Infinite Sea was pretty good overall. I liked the clearer transitions of perspectives between the characters which was something that was a bit confusing in the first book. I also liked the romance aspects sprinkled into the book; I thought it added a really nice touch and contributed to the book well. There were pretty deep concepts and things the characters in the book said that provoked my thoughts and led me to think more on my own. Something I didn't like as much was how the love line between Cassie and Evan was a bit cheesy sometimes, because if there are only a couple humans left on the entire Earth, how did they just randomly *happen* to meet each other again? Cassie was also so determined to find him, not always thinking about the situation at hand and what would be best for the whole group which was a tiny bit annoying.
Who would like it?: I think this book is geared towards teenagers that like a mixture of sci-fi, dystopia, romance, violence, and action mixed in all together. It was a pretty engaging read that I think a lot of classmates would enjoy.
That was my attempt at filling out the book template in hopes of possibly remembering more of what I've been reading. It did definitely help me reflect and ponder about the book more than I would usually do. Thanks for reading, and maybe try this out for yourself with your next read!
Link to YouTube video on remembering your reads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjoxkxM_I5g
-Maddie
That sounds really interesting and I think I might try it out. It makes sense how those details can jog your memory of a book. It also sounds great for recommending books to others with the parts of what you liked and who would like it. I can totally see how this would be useful especially if you read a ton of books.
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting way of remembering books. I agree that I forget most of the books I read, and although this seems like a good strategy, in all honesty I wouldn't use it, being as lazy as I am. It would be useful to remember books but having to do that for every book you want to remember seems over the top for me.
ReplyDeleteI like how relatable this post is. I have also been watching a lot of YouTube, and I can't remember all of the plots to the books I have read. This is a really cool idea, and I like how your post has a book review in it, but it is framed in a more creative and interesting way.
ReplyDeleteThis method seems like an useful way to condense information from a book into a format that is easy to remember - I am personally not a very detail-oriented person, so I might end up testing this out.
ReplyDeleteThis is a pretty interesting way of remembering books. I forget most of the content in the books I read after about a week. I probably won't ever use this method, but I might use it for school projects later in the future. Using this would be useful to remember books and details, especially if you read a lot of books.
ReplyDelete