[hahamaster]

Honestly, what exactly is the purpose of knowing when was Rockefeller born or how many companies was his company split into? I think what you get out of a book like this is gist of his character and what made him successful so that you can pick up some of his traits. All this information is stored somewhere in your brain in some way.. it can possibly be used at some point without you even realizing.

[keiferski]

It was just an example. More realistically the facts are about his specific decisions he made, business events, etc. – the kind of thing you'd want to know if you're interested in business history and/or reading the book to glean some kind of entrepreneurial knowledge.

A better example might be related to the Roman emperor Augustus. Memorizing the various events of his life, his personal quirks, and so forth is absolutely going to give you a sense of the man moreso than just reading a random biography about him.

I do agree that a book provides the "gist" of the subject's character, but I think you can get that from watching a 30-minute documentary, not reading a 500-page book.

> All this information is stored somewhere in your brain in some way.. it can possibly be used at some point without you even realizing.

It's a pretty big assumption, if you're implying that we somehow remember everything we read.

In any case, I think the best approach is probably to combine reading a book with specific facts that easily fit into a SRS system. This is something I've been thinking about quite a bit, in fact: how would one design a narrative-based book such that it is more easily remembered? My initial thought is something like this: at the end of every chapter, a list of 100+ specific points made is presented. You could also include a premade Anki deck with the ebook edition.