The Memory Book: The Classic Guide to Improving Your Memory at Work, at School, and at Play PDF
Preview The Memory Book: The Classic Guide to Improving Your Memory at Work, at School, and at Play
A Ballantine Book Published by The Random House Publishing Group Copyright © 1974 by Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. www.ballantinebooks.com Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-96797 eISBN: 978-0-307-81406-7 v3.1 Praise for The Memory Book “A most unusual book about memory training … absorbing material to practice and use.” —Los Angeles Times “Will enable you to remember anything from long-digit numbers to where you left your car keys.” —Nashville Banner “It’s easy, it’s fun … it works.” —The Columbus Dispatch Contents Cover Title Page Copyright F : Jerry Lucas OREWORD F : Harry Lorayne OREWORD 1 Some History of the Art 2 In the First Place: Association 3 The Link 4 Substitute Words 5 Long Words, Appointments and Errands, Shopping Lists 6 Speeches 7 Foreign and English Vocabulary 8 Names and Faces 9 Absentmindedness 10 Long-Digit Numbers 11 The Peg 12 Style Numbers, Prices, Telephone Numbers 13 Playing Cards 14 Weekly Appointments; Days of the Week 15 Anniversaries, the Zodiac, Historical Dates 16 The Alphabet and Picturing Letters 17 Start Your Children 18 Sports 19 The Stock Market 20 Politics 21 The Arts 22 Music for Beginners 23 Reading 24 The Memory Graph 25 Potpourri 26 Look, I’m a Genius 27 Finally Dedication Other Books by This Author FOREWORD: JERRY LUCAS As a child, I had a peculiarly busy mind. I can never remember a time when my mind wasn’t occupied with some sort of activity, whether it was communicating directly with someone else, or being actively involved with a mental game of my own invention. By the time I was eight years old, I had so much nervous energy that it was hard for me to sit still. On lengthy automobile trips my constant fidgeting, tapping, and so on got on my parents’ nerves. It got to the point where I became used to requests from them to “calm down a little.” Just after one such request, I remember looking at an oil company billboard and saying to myself, “What would ‘SHELL’ look like if the letters were arranged in alphabetical order?” I mentally rearranged it to “EHLLS,” and I was hooked. Ever since then, I have memorized words alphabetically as well as normally. Thanks to this mental habit, I could spell amazingly well as a child. If you can rearrange a word instantly and spell it in alphabetical order, you know that word very well. To give some examples: CAT becomes ACT, MEMORY becomes EMMORY, JERRY LUCAS becomes EJRRY ACLSU, and HARRY LORAYNE becomes AHRRY AELNORY! Once I’ve alphabetized a word, I can remember it in that form—when you read the chapter on how to remember English and foreign vocabulary, you’ll understand how I do this. I apply the same system, since an alphabetized word is like a foreign word. I soon followed this alphabetical spelling game with various other kinds of mental games. You might think I was a bit crazy if I took the time to explain all of them, so I won’t, but they did require a lot of counting, cataloging, and recall on the part of a very young boy. As I grew older, my mental games and activities became more complex. I began to develop simple memory systems to help me with my studies in school. To me, schoolwork always seemed to be at least 90 percent memory work, and I wanted to make it easier and less time- consuming for myself. These systems worked, and I began to expand and sophisticate them. They worked well for me throughout junior high school and high school, where I was practically a straight-A student. I would like to impress upon you that all of this mental activity was of a private nature. No living human being knew that I had the ability, for example, to alphabetize any word faster than most people could spell it normally, nor did anyone know how involved I was with other mental activities and memory systems. An important change took place when I entered college. I read one of Harry Lorayne’s books and used many of his systems or ideas in areas where I thought his were better, or simpler, or easier to apply; others I adapted to my own. He became something of an idol to me, and I was soon to find out how the combination of his systems and mine would help me in my college studies. My roommate at Ohio State University during my freshman year was John Havlicek, the great professional basketball star of the Boston Celtics. John became the first person to know about all the things that went on in my mind. My first college class was traumatic. I entered the classroom and sat in the back row, knowing other students would be unable to see over my six-foot-eight frame. It was an American history class. The professor spent about fifteen minutes telling us what he expected of us and how the class would be conducted. His last statement before he excused us was something to the effect that “Any athlete who expects to be in my class, sit in the back row, do nothing, and get good grades is sadly mistaken. You are excused.” I told John Havlicek what had happened and shared with him my determination to use memory systems to my best advantage in this particular class. “What systems?” he asked me, and it all began to flow out for the first time. I told John how I had begun to spell alphabetically as a child and I demonstrated it for him. He couldn’t really believe what he was hearing. I explained, as best I could, how my mind worked and all the mental activity I was involved in. I’m sure he thought I was a little crazy, but he challenged me to spell
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