Review: It works, but ....
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 12, 2013
See warning at the end of the review!First of all, I borrowed this for free through Amazon Prime, after reading Moonwalking with Einstein. That book showed that an average person can memorize (which is not quite the same thing as remember) a surprising amount of material, through a specific technique called the Memory Palace. I had heard about this method before, and gave it a half-hearted try, but like many people, I felt that it was too much trouble--learning a bunch of random stuff in order to learn the actual target material seemed like twice as much work.But even half-hearted attempts seemed to work, at least for a while.And after reading the Moonwalking book, I figured, why not? I'm 61 years old, my Dad just died of Alzheimer's this year, anything that can give my brain a workout is worth a try.The plus of this book is that instead of explaining the memory palace technique, it just jumps right in and demonstrates it. It does all the imaginative work of walking you through a scenario with the crazy associations elaborated for you in print. And if you pay attention, form clear mental images as you go, and have a few functioning brain cells, it should take.What I found is that after one reading, I did *not* have all 37 of Shakespeare's plays committed to memory. But what went wrong was very illuminating, because the ones I screwed up were the ones that I didn't really put in a specific enough location in the first place. The parts that I imagined clearly were firmly imprinted. The ones where I went, "Ok, corner of my street, wait, no, maybe the next street would be better, um, ok, let's say the house next door..."--those slipped away. But the corner of my bedroom, the door to the bathroom, the front porch, in front of the movie theatre, those were as clear as a bell.So I see that indeed, this system will allow me, with some practice, and mostly, with clear image-making (imagining) in the first place, to memorize lists of various things.I must admit that I am an English major and college English teacher, and I couldn't have told you even how many plays Shakespeare wrote, much less which one was first, or last, or how many of those damn Henrys he wrote. And now I can. (Also, Dickens wrote a couple of books I've never heard of.)I was on Jeopardy about 7 years ago, and I tried to learn all the presidents, using another method, but I never got them all in place. Now I think I will finally, with some time and effort, get my presidents straight.So yeah, the book is short, there are a couple of grammatical oddities, but it's worth $3.99 for sure if you're interested in using this method to memorize things.EDIT: WARNING! Do not memorize the list of presidents given here! John Tyler and James K. Polk are missing! (They belong between Wm. H. Harrison and Zachary Taylor). Maybe the author's memory failed him? Maybe he really does need an editor? Now I wonder if the list of Shakespeare plays that I have memorized is actually correct! (Gotta remove one star for this error.)