If you’ve met bookseller Sam, he’s probably told you about his love for Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking With Einstein. This book, about memory improvement and memory sports, has been on his favourites list since he joined Mr B’s. In November, Sam is taking his enthusiasm for memory to Sweden, where he has qualified to compete in the International Association of Memory’s World Memory Championship.
Here’s what he had to say: “For a decade It’s been a quiet ambition of mine to compete in a memory sports competition, ever since I read ‘Moonwalking With Einstein’. I picked up the book when I first became a bookseller, having realised that my naturally sieve-like memory was going to be a problem in a career where it’s helpful to be able to remember titles and authors, plot points and contents.
It’s not as if my memory has become perfect, but using the techniques that Foer introduces and other ideas from memory-related books I’ve enjoyed, I’ve made significant improvements. With the exception of those with neurodegenerative diseases, anybody could use this stuff to improve their ability to record and recall.
The competition includes memorising and recalling abstract information, like sheets of random numbers and words, dates for fictional events, and shuffled decks of cards. I don’t expect to rank particularly highly, because there are some very hardworking and enthusiastic memory athletes internationally, often younger than me and with more time for training. But I’m interested to see how well I can do, as a representative of the usually forgetful and scatterbrained among us. I’m looking forward to letting you know how I did in late November.”