Good morning!
Another conversation posts for you guys ~ although i’ve had the question in mind for quite a while now, it just got onto me to FINALLY write it.. 😅 –Looks like i’m as much as a “mood writer” than a mood reader, eh..-
Something that i’ve been curious about, with the general blogger out there (not including me.. i’m still a “baby reader” somehow) that generally can read up to 100+ books a year, is do you guys actually remember all of thoses stories? Beside tracking which book you did read and whatnot with goodread or other means, can you remember the main storylines?
When I was younger, and thus my selection of books less “open” and broad, I tend to reread so much more often than I do nowadays.. which maybe did help with my memory, but I know that I could tell you the basic of the story within any book of my shelf. Or mostly.
Since my mental health declined however, along with mon concentration and imagination, most of the stories went away with it too.. There’s still a *couple* of thoses that I vaguely remember, either because i’ve re-read it so much or because they had such an impact on me; like this ONE BOOK that I remember the ending troubling me so much, and I was possibly already in a bad phase then, that it left me with a urge to self-harm.. which I didn’t ! Stay reassured, but as it wasn’t even within that story, I have no idea how my brain had came to THAT 🤔 I just remember a heavy “void” feeling..
While not as perfect as I believe it was back then, I can probably give you basic story lines or little events that happened in the books i’ve read that I remember.. which of course DISSAPEAR when I try to do a tag 🤣 Suddently, when I need to name a character with a certain behavior or circumstance, I can’t remember anything.
Sometimes i’d read reviews of books and everything would mix in my head but I’d know I had read something along the same lines as the book i’m reading the review for.. but couldn’t remember WHICH ONE.. so it does take me a while to pinpoint it.
Do you remember the “major” part of the books you read?
For me, I feel like it really depends on the book and where I’m at with my life at that point in time. I know when I was reading a lot I had a little notebook where I took notes to help me remember things later when I went to write reviews.
Sometimes I might remember everything about books and others I’ll only remember snippets.
A sign that a book truly stood out to me is if it was something I couldn’t stop thinking about months or even years later. If a book really didn’t stand out as anything special to me, in either a positive or negative way I might remember vague details or be able to tell you I read it but not much else.
If I’m in a bad head space when I read something, regardless of how good it was, I might not remember it all that well.
I feel it’s similar to anything we consume regularly -be it food, television, or even conversations. Some things stick with us and others tend to go away, but the truly special moments tend to linger the longest.
Ohh yep, you have a very good point there- I agree.
There’s still books that Ive read years ago that I randomly just go back to and wake up to think about them.
I think I remember the gist of the plot of the books I read, although it’s true that I too forget them when doing tags lol! Also, as a slow reader, I am in awe of people who can read 100 books a year. I can never do that!
Same! Although i’ve seen a blogger (can’t remember who..) that was saying that when they hurried to finish a book, let’s say for a readathon or something, they’d have no idea what the story was even about upon finishing it…
I have a really bad memory so while I can remember general outlines of books, a book has to be either an absolute favourite of mine or one that I’ve really intensively studied for me to remember it. There are those books that I will remember random parts of, and then there are others that are completely wiped from my memory a week after I finish it, but those are usually books that I didn’t really care for.
Fair enough.. I mean, we don’t really wanna remember books we haven’t liked anyway, right? 😅