Am I actually learning anything by reading eBooks?

My quest for improved reading retention

Recently I was thinking about a historical topic on which I felt I needed more clarity. Though I had a general familiarity with it, the timeline was jumbled in my mind. Rather than resorting to a Google search, which I knew I wouldn’t retain well, I began looking for a book on the topic to give me a better framework. Soon enough, I was narrowing down a list of a few books I thought might be helpful.

One book in particular stood out because I knew I’d seen it recommended in the past. When I looked at the summary, I thought, “Wow. This might be exactly what I’m looking for.” I began looking up the author’s credentials and then pulled up Goodreads to get a general feel for how people felt about the book.

Here’s what I saw:

Yep. That’s right…

Not only had I read the book, I had read it a mere fourteen months ago.

And not only had I read it only fourteen months ago, I had given it five bright yellow stars.

And not only had I read it so recently and given it five stars, I had forgotten all about it. I, who credit myself (and have been credited by others) with a great memory, had completely forgotten I’d read this book. All I could remember was that the cover looked familiar and that I knew I’d seen it recommended.

There’s no sense in me mentioning the author’s name or the book’s title, because I don’t think the real issue at hand was that the author wrote a less-than-memorable book. In fact, according to many Goodreads reviews, this book offered significant value to a number of readers. I have no doubt that the book was worthwhile, especially considering that I don’t offer five stars to books lightly, and to this one I did. The problem couldn’t have been with the book itself. The problem was that I hadn’t retained it.

If you read the title of this post, you see where I’m headed.

I read this book on Kindle.

While I had my hesitations about getting an e-reader for many years, I came around to it when I had my first child in early 2020. I could hold a Kindle in one hand while rocking my baby and read, even in a dark room. Of course the advantages only grew when getting physical books from the library became more difficult during the pandemic. I was hooked. Despite having a new baby, I actually read more books in 2020 than I had in years past.

When I had my second child in the middle of 2022, again, I resorted to reading mostly on the Kindle. That baby wanted to be held and rocked all the time, and I spent most of that time reading. I read 80 books in 2022.

I slowed my reading pace a bit in 2023 and 2024 because I was afraid I was breezing through books too quickly to retain as much information as I wanted to, but I still kept reading most of my books on the Kindle. Occasionally I’d read a physical book, but I recognized that doing so was far less convenient than having digital access to it. In 2023, the year I read the forgotten book that sparked this post, I read 61 books.

But here’s what I wonder: If I read 61 books in a calendar year, but I completely forgot nearly everything about at least one of those books, how much did I really gain?

I’m not saying that reading is only as valuable as the retention, but as someone who reads quite a bit of nonfiction with the intention of learning, isn’t retaining what I’ve learned pretty important? I’d say so.

A quick internet search will lead you to all kinds of articles on how much impact reading on a screen versus a physical book has on reading experience, retention, etc.¹ Opinions and research are mixed but tend to skew slightly in favor of the notion that an eBook can’t deliver exactly the same experience that good old paper can. I’d be inclined to believe that to some degree this varies by reader. I’m a visual learner, and I’ve noticed that as a reader I remember information based on where it was on a page in a book, what that page looked like, and how far into a book it was. Much of that experience is either lost to me or at least significantly weakened by reading digitally.

Long story short, I think that no, I don’t learn as well from an eBook as I do from a physical book. Surely I’m learning something. I can certainly recall plenty of information I’ve learned as I’ve read on Kindle over the past few years, but I wonder how much more I would have remembered if I’d read some of those same books in hard copy.

Am I willing to completely give up Kindle-reading though? Probably not. I do love the convenience of it, and I also don’t think every book I read is one that needs to be remembered entirely. Sometimes I’m reading purely for entertainment. I’ll wrap this up with a plan for how I’d like to read in a way that improves my reading retention while still sometimes taking advantage of eBooks.

A Brief Plan for Deciding between Print and eBooks

1. If I want to read a novel purely for enjoyment, if I suspect that it’s going to be hard to put down, or if I want to read a book quickly or casually, I’ll check it on Kindle from the library.

2. If I want to read a novel for enjoyment but also want to slow down and be really immersed in the story, I’ll strongly consider a physical copy. Recently I re-read Little Women in this way and thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience.

3. If I’m reading a nonfiction book to learn some information I want to retain, I’ll plan to read it from a physical copy. I’ll take notes as I read, copying down quotes that I’d like to be able to refer back to or use in future essays.

4. If I’m reading a nonfiction book to learn information that I want to retain but for whatever reason need to read an eBook version of it, I’ll still take notes as I read and copy important quotes. Taking notes adds a physical aspect to the reading experience that I think helps me connect and remember more from an eBook.

5. If I’m reading an advance copy of a book before its release, that’s most often going to be an eBook via Net Galley. Advance copies of eBooks tend to have a lot of formatting issues, making it even harder to visualize where information is on the page. Because of that, I’m trying to be much more sparing with the books I choose to read this way.

6. Finally, if I have a book in mind to read that I’d really like to have on my own shelf at home, I’ll probably buy a print copy. I recently bought The Pilgrim’s Progress and Paradise Lost so I can revisit them for the first time since college. My first experience reading both of those texts was in the tiny print of a Norton anthology, and I look forward to having pretty copies of them for our home library!

Of course I’m sure I’ll find plenty of exceptions to these guidelines. For one thing, I typically like to be reading both a fiction book and a nonfiction book at any given time, one in print and one as an eBook. It won’t always be feasible to line up my fiction/nonfiction and print/eBook schedule evenly, so I won’t hold perfectly to my self-determined rules. That’s fine. Part of the fun of rules is making them.

1. Here’s just one. https://bookriot.com/reading-ebooks/