For someone who is constantly trying to remember where I left my glasses, Joshua Foer’s “Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything” had obvious appeal. And guess what? Once I started reading, I was so taken with this captivating book that I pretty much forgot everything else until I finished it. As one critic says: “You have to love a writer who uses chick sexing to help explain memory.”
We travel through time with Foer, back to the ancient Greek poet Simonedes and his “memory palaces” — visual images used as mnemonic devices. This technique is still used today, and I’m having so much fun with it that I can now recall at will a totally random list of objects such as a jar of pickled garlic, a vat of cottage cheese, 3 hula hoops, and a peat-smoked salmon!
Foer engagingly describes this and other techniques — but this book is by no means a “How-To” manual. It’s an examination of culture, the transmission of information from generation to generation, contemporary external memory devices (think smart phone, computer, IPad…) and the quirky individuals Foer met in his quest to compete at the 2006 US Memory Championship. And it’s a great read! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go look for my glasses.
Posted by Youth Services Librarian Janet Kleinberg
