Genuinely hard to express how seeing this made me feel -- particularly on a day of coincidental turmoil for Windows & MS. (I was a developer & dev lead on MS Money long ago, and clearly remember dragging him over for extended nighttime in-person kd stack-unwinding sessions.) He was so generous to our efforts to make that product a good one, and his electric, unstoppably curious, just-get-it-right combination of deep skill, energy, & attention to customers still totally inspires.
Be as much like him as possible. Necktie optional.
Foer's book pairs a solid survey of techniques to master memory with a great story about his own disciplined walk through the world of competitive recall. I think you will like it.
And yeah, within a free-ranging story well told, there are introductions to multiple techniques (some of them rooted in the ancient, like the “Method of Loci", and some of them interesting contemporary 'cheats') that you might want to try applying to your retention of dense texts. I totally recognize & share the difficulty you describe.
Be as much like him as possible. Necktie optional.