Fuck it, I'll bite. Maybe someone can learn from this.
>>68877
Some advice:
>Practice what you learned
That can mean writing essays about it, explaining it to family or friends, holding a lecture, or anything, really. It can also mean just thinking about it throughout the day. If you read some philosophical essay and are then wondering for a whole week about why it must be wrong, then you'll remember it. Reviewing also works very well, it's what the reading threads here are good for.
>Think about what you read
Reading isn't a passive activity. You have to relate what you read to what you already know, think about where it adds up and where it doesn't, always question whether you really understood what you read, and make a mental note whenever something strikes you as incredibly brilliant or unbelievably stupid. Sounds like work? It is, but then again, no one ever said it's easy to be an intellectual. And trust me, it's getting easier.
>Be passionate
Not about reading as a hobby, but about what you're reading. Care about the topic. Get mad at historical persons. Combine this with the above and tell your older sister what an asshole Jean-Baptiste Carrier was. Emotion helps with remembering, that's an established fact. Just don't go overboard with it, emotion should always be guided by reason.
>Read more than one book on a topic before you have time to forget about it
Refresh your knowledge. Articles can work too. Don't wait too long before you refresh it, but don't jump straight into it either. Let the information simmer for a while, then, when it doesn't feel completely new anymore but also not quite irrevocably forgotten, start the next book. It doesn't have to be the same topic, but it should be somewhat related. Read about the Gulags, then about the history of the USSR, then a biography on Stalin, and then a treatise on dictatorships. I guarantee you, you'll feel like an expert afterwards, and compared to 90% of all the people you will meet, you will be one, too.
>>68878
That's a shitty idea, anon. I've read both articles and books, and an article just doesn't compare with a good book. Again, reading is an activity. You're not sitting in front of a book staring into space, getting all the knowledge automatically imprinted in you. You yourself decide what the salient points are, while you're reading. Books include lots of minor details not because you're supposed to remember all of them. They are there as additional tools that you can use while you're thinking. Then you can remember your conclusion and forget the details that went into it. You can even draw conclusions that no one thought about before, not even the author. When reading a book on the history of warfare, you could notice, for example, that island nations never lose wars, or that mediterranean nations never commit war crimes (just random, factually incorrect examples). You can do that because the data is there, and it wouldn't be there if someone else tried to sum up the "important parts" for you. Then, after you're done reading, you can forget all these details, but while you're reading, they're still important.
There's also the problem of specialization. An article must either cover a wide range and omit all the details (including ones that would be crucial), or it must go insanely into depth and omit a lot of the context. The former is obviously less than optimal. The latter will leave you shaking your head unless you have a strong foundation. To get this foundation, you can read twenty articles, or one book. Either way, you'll have to read.