I read quite a lot, about a book a week, over 50 in a year. Yet I would be hard pressed to write more than a page on any particular book I’ve read recently. Considering all the hours I put in, what is the point?

I recently came across an essay called How You Know, by Paul Graham, that finally put into words my feelings about that question, “Reading and experience train your model of the world. And even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world persists.” Basically, you have lots of experiences but recall very few of them with any frequency, yet it is the sum of those experiences that make you into the person you are today. Books operate in the same way, constantly forming and molding your identity even if you don’t remember discrete details from the text.

I have found that to be more or less true. I get the most from books not when I try to remember everything from a single work, but when I read broadly over a specific topic. I may not have all the facts immediately on hand, but the human brain is adept at recognizing patterns and I’ve found that the patterns I pick up from books can have a subtle but lasting influence on the way I see the world.