Use Your Perfect Memory [Hardcover]

I read this book and 4 other memory books in quick sucession intending to compare them. The others were (in order of my preference) "Your Memory : How It Works & How to Improve It" by Kenneth Higbee, "The Memory Book" by Lorayne and Lucas, Buzan's "Use You Perfect Memory", "How to Develop a Superpower Memory" also by Lorayne and finally Kevin Trudeau's "Mega-Memory".

The techniques are organized a little differently from most books and he separates them into minor and major systems. The minor systems are the simple pegging systems, which associate the numbers 1-10 (or letters A-Z) with what you want to rememeber.

The major system is usually called the phonetic system or numbers to letters. It is a phonetic substitution for numbers that let you turn a number into letters and words. Most memory books also include this system.

Of course, all of the books have chapters on remembering names from faces, the most common memory trouble that people have. They all give the same suggestions with little variation and all of them work very well.

Overall, I liked Buzan, but thought Higbee's book was much better. If you only want the techniques and don't care about background and research results, this book is as good as any (Lorayne and Lucas's "The Memory Book" is very comparable to this one). If you want more depth and information, I suggest "Your Memory" by Ken Higbee, which is a much more complete reference to memnonics and memory in general.

Be that as it may, the information and techniques he presents are generally fairly sound. I have yet to buy one of his books and to feel ripped off having done so...which is not something I can say about all the brainpower (or accelerated learning) books I've bought. One thing I like about Buzan's books is that they don't promise the sky, which SOOOOOO many other books in this genre do.

This books presents 5 simple memory enhancement techniques, devices that can be used to memorize relatively short lists of information (under 20, generally). There is also a "Master System" which can be used to memorize 1,000 or more pieces of information. (Annoyingly, if you want to further develop this system, Buzan refers you to one of his other books--in fact, he refers you to his other books througout.) The systems can be modified to accomodate different types of information, and for different purposes. There is instruction on remember names and face, phone numbers, poems, dramatic parts, and exam information.

Does it work? Actually, yes. There is nothing groundbreaking here, and nothing magical, but with minimal practice, you will enjoy noticeable results. I haven't used the Master System, so I cannot comment from experience on it, but the principles that it uses are the same as those used in the "smaller" systems, so there is no reason it shouldn't work. This stuff does take an effort, though, and in some cases it is probably better simply to *write* a list, rather than spend the time committing it to memory using even a minor system.