Learn Anything and Everything (Starting With Shakespeare and Dickens) (Faking Smart Book 1)

If you've been reading memory palace techniques but stop short of trying it out, this is the book to get you started.

It got me building my own palace and I'm using it right now. With all skills, it takes practice and it does feel clumsy at first to map things into the palace. I'm still getting the hang of it.

A couple of possible Improvements will make it 5 stars for me
1) Some of the examples are too americanized and hard to imagine. Localizing it or using more global/famous examples would be useful.
2) A more complex memory walk through other than Charles Dicken/Shakespeare would be useful. i.e. Learning a new language or remember the highest peaks in the world and their elevations in both ft and m. (3 attributes)

I heard about this on The Mentalist and decided to look it up. It was a very quick read and worked much better than I expected. I still need work to learn more but I'm glad I have this book to get back to.

First off this book isn't for everybody. For those of you who want a strict "how to" and "outlined manual" this probably isn't the book for you. This book takes a lot of imagination and open mindedness because the first half of the book contains (spoilers) a ridiculous story that is an example on how crazy things should get in your mind palace. I mean after all it is your mind.

I took this information as a tool to help me improve my mind palace, much like homework. Practice makes perfect. Well worth 3$ and your time.

I just purchased and have already read this ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC & BRILLIANTLY IMAGINATIVE book call ''The Memory Palace, written by Lewis Smile. I MUST say that this in my opinion is by FAR ONE of THEE BEST books I have EVER read on Memory Palaces. I just LOVE IT and is reading it a second time already within 2.5 hrs. It's INCREDIBLY simple to learn. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT 2 everyone that wants to succeed in their studies! Thank You, Lewis!

This 'book' is far too thin/empty to adequately convey to its readers 'How to use the Memory Palace concept to improve your memory." What is in the book is OK, but the book lacks adequate content. There are more complete descriptions elsewhere. Furthermore, the author does not sufficiently touch upon why this system works. I suspect that he/she does not really know why; yet, knowing why would assist the reader, and would be the next big step towards developing and practicing more effective and efficient memorization. I happen to know why, because I learned a superior memorization technique in Tokyo. It must remain a secret for now. in the meantime, national and international memorization competitions are virtually useless to society. Such competitions are largely based upon the techniques addressed in mini-book. My suspicion is that the far-better memorization techniques I speak about are still relatively unknown today.

I am HORRIBLE at remembering things. I'm what the author describes as someone who gets flustered knowing they should know something but they just can't recall it.

I've taken in-class study skills courses which helped some, but that was years ago. This book was a fun read - almost like a fiction novel instead of an educational guide, yet it helped me discover a better (more fun) way of retaining data.

This book will be a good introduction to the concept of memory palace. We have to keep practicing the techniques that they explain in this book. In a nutshell, I think you can go ahead and buy this book.

For the first time, someone has written a book that illustrates out how to use memory techniques to aid memory. This isn't theoretical, the author actually writes stories that help the reader memorize content. I always thought I had a lousy memory, but my confidence received a huge boost from this experience.

I dislike writing bad reviews, but this book fell very short of my expectations. There is no real description or discussion of the memory palace concept, just the steps of the visual memory journey used by the author to remember all of Shakespeare's plays. I feel this book elucidates nothing that isn't already common sense. I would dissuade anyone from reading it.

This guy just grabbed bits and pieces of ideas from everyone else who's written on the subject and pretended he had something worth selling. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY. Jonathan Foer's book is excellent. I'm insulted that he even offered this piece of crap as if it were something actually useful. The worst sort of plagiarism, and his style adds nothing whatsoever to the value of the piece. Pure crap. He should be banned from selling e-books on the store and everyone else.

I had heard of this technique in a psychology class I took a few years ago, but disregarded it because it seemed childish. After reading this book, I feel like a complete idiot for not paying more attention to what could become the key many future successes. The author took me on a hilarious journey that resulted in my learning a series of plays and books that will never be forgotten. Not ever. I will be recommending this book to anyone who will listen. I might even shout it from the mountains, of which I now know the tallest ten in order of height. Many thanks to the author for this amazing tool.

The author harps on for pages and pages about how good the method described is. Eventually he gets to a ridiculous story which is supposed to help us remember the titles of Shakespeare's plays. Well, I can remember some details about the story, but the plays' names? Not at all. I can't even remember the first one accurately: is it Two Gentlemen of Verona or Gentlemen of Verona or what? No idea.

Either the book or its method completely fails the actually-does-something test.

Once again Lewis Smile brings something to the table that I've never heard of before! He makes it not only sound easy but once you learn, you will find that it IS easy!

This is my second book from him and again I loved his voice that comes through in the writing. He must be a quirky and fun person to be around because that is written all over every word.

The Memory Palace was exceptionally interesting and I can now name all of Shakespeare's plays in order. Maybe not something that you want to do but what makes this so intriguing is that I know how to remember things that I was not able to remember before thanks to his wonderful way of teaching.

I liked this book a lot. It demonstrates how the memory palace technique works by guiding you through a scenario conceived by the author. You learn the titles and chronological order of the Shakespeare plays, as well as Charles Dickens stories. It works. It's really rather freaky, but it's been months since I read this and I can remember the entire visualization, and could probably pass a test of the titles. I'm sure I'd miss one or two at this point, but the nice things about the technique is that you KNOW when you are forgetting something, so at least you know that much...

The presents a "story" that delivers the Shakespeare titles, which is really well crafted--this is why it is so effective. However, I felt that the book doesn't do much to teach how to create the visualization for yourself. The author does say that you need to use images and locations that work for you, but the book would have been more broadly useful if it included this knowledge.

As a demonstration of the effectiveness of the memory palace memory technique, it is very good.

This book is a fine work on memorization, and probably one of the better books on the Memory Palace method. However, the issue I have with this book is its lack of application to comprehension. This and other books on memory techniques conflate memorization with learning. To memorize a list of Shakespeare plays and Dickens works says nothing of understanding - it it simply rote memorization of a list of names. "The Memory Palace" leaves it at that, as if this is what learning is about.

This book is absolutely amazing in its simplicity - In under one hour I have all 37 of Shakespeare's plays (titles) memorized and after one hour I've been able to memorize the titles to all 20 of Dickens' books.

I will be employing this method to remember:
All the US Presidents
The Periodic Table of Elements
Several work related items

I can't wait to continue using the Memory Palace!

I would have preferred that the book discussed more about the theory and methodology about why this system works instead of just jumping right in. I had purchased an audio program that discussed the same thing many years ago and was hoping to get a refresher. This book was an easy read. It gets you right into the method through practice.

Not a definitive guide to memory palaces, but a simple and straightforward exposition of what's possible using modern memory techniques. Worked for me! Might not work well for you if you are not good at special memory.

This book ran me through how to organize information for easy recall later. It needs to be intentional, but it can be fun and wacky, whatever gets you to remember the information. Thank you for sharing this method! ❤️