Reddit reviews The Memory Book: The Classic Guide to Improving Your Memory at Work, at School, and at Play

He has another one called The Memory Book that's available on kindle for $10.99 and covers the same material. I bought a copy of Memory Mastery at Barnes & Noble from their discount rack and wouldn't pay $40 for it.

Harry Lorayne is very big on the Link and Peg Methods for memory. Both are very effective, very easy to learn and once you start practicing it's hard to turn off. It's pretty versatile so how you end up using it is up to you and you're only limited by your imagination.

Use Mnemotics. Create a virtual path in an imaginary place or your house. On certain points of this path you are placing visualisations of your Facts/Script which you are then using as cues to remember your script.
lets say I want to remember a short text lke a Joke:
> A woman awakes during the night to find her husband is not in bed.
> She puts on her robe and goes downstairs to look for him.
>
> She finds him sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of hot cocoa in > front of him.
>
> He appears to be in deep thought, just staring at the wall.
>
> She watches as he wipes away a tear from his eye.
>
> "What's the matter, dear?" she whispers as she steps into the
> room.... "Why are you down here at this time of night!?"
>
> The husband looks up from his drink, "It's the 20th Anniversary of the > day we met."
>
> She can't believe he has remembered and starts to tear up.
>
> The husband continues, "Do you remember 20 years ago when we
> started dating? I was 18 and you were only 15," he said solemnly.
>
> Once again, the wife is touched to tears thinking that her husband is > so caring and sensitive. "Yes, I do" she replies.
>
> The husband pauses....... The words were not coming easily.
>
> "Do you remember when your father caught us in the back seat of
> my car?"
>
> "Yes, I remember" said the wife, lowering herself into a chair beside
> him.
>
> The husband continued. "Do you remember when he shoved the
> shotgun in my face and said, Either you marry my daughter or I will
> make sure you spend the next 20 years in prison?"
>
> "I remember that, too" she replied softly...
>
> He sighed as he wiped another tear away from his cheek and said, "I > would have gotten out today."

I am right now visualizing the first level of half life 2:
You are in the train, in the train is a bed and a citizen is getting out of it. At the same moment the G-Man is fading backwards and is telling you to "wake up Mr. Freeman".
you leave the train and see the camera robot that is taking a foto of you. The robot goes down some stairs which are build into the ground of the trainstation.
You proceed to the revolving door and see the woman asking you about her husband staring at a wall she begins to cry
At this moment the scary movie guy is coming along, asking the woman "wazzuuup?"
and is throwing a cake at her, (which of course is a lie)
Behind the revolving door is michael Jackson; singing do you remember the time. A car crashes into the room, running over michale Jackson, kicking of his nose. Inside the car is a young couple.
Combines are around the car. aiming with shotguns. You leave the place as fast as you can.

Wikipedia on the loci method

corny Youtube Video

further reading

Hannibal by Thomas Harris had a very, um, memorable memory palace in it. IIRC, Harris based Hannibal's palace on the ones described in The Memory Palace of Mateo Ricci, by Jonathan Spence, which is hard to find but interesting. The Memory Book by Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas (yes, that Jerry Lucas) is another great source of mnemonic hacks.

I bought a book called "The Memory Book" and it taught me a shitload of different techniques.


One of the techniques for remembering names, is pairing someone's name, with a feature of their face, along with something ridiculous. The more ridiculous the better. I've actually used it many times to remember people's names.

Fellow wrestler and rugby player here. Try reading and practicing the material in The Memory Book by Harry Lorayne. I picked it up years ago and just kept practicing. Now it’s habitual and I do it without really thinking about. Highly recommend it.