Best of the Booker and remembering books
It was announced this week that Salman Rushdie’s book Midnight’s Children has (again) won the Best of the Booker (this time for the 40th anniversary of the prize). I looked at the shortlist a while back – for some reason, just six previous Booker winners were nominated to be potential Best of the Bookers, which seems a bit unfair – but in any case, I couldn’t decide that any of them were better than the others, and didn’t vote.
But apparently 36% of the voters decided on Midnight’s Children, a pretty high proportion. The frustrating thing for me is that I know I’ve read this book, and have a very, very vague impression of it still left in my brain, but if I had to describe anything about it to anyone, I’d be utterly lost. Basically I’d just say “it’s about India”, a dismal summary if I ever heard one.
The thing is, there are hundreds of books that I can’t remember much about at all, even though at the time I found them absolutely fascinating. This problem is dramatically increased if I read a book within a day or two, so for that reason I limit my reading of books that I’m loving, so that they’ll stick better in my brain. But still, come back a few months later and there are so many cases where I could look at the cover of a book, know my opinion about it, but can’t tell you anything about the characters or plot. I find this rather distressing, I have to say, and hate to think that people will do the same to my books in the future!
Am I the only one out there who has this weird kind of book amnesia?
Manda, I have this all the time. It doesn’t usually matter how affecting a book or film is, I pretty much *always* forget “how it goes” so to speak. It’s most annoying. I think people have different abilities though, because I can’t forget songs, not at all, no way. They’re my thing, they penetrate my mind more deeply than fiction does, so I seem to always remember. Mind you, I know a *lot* of musicians that not only remember a lot of songs, but they are also expert at quoting from films and tv shows too. Maybe it has to do with how much you think? I spend a lot of time thinking (ummm, possibly read daydreaming) and I think that takes up the time I could spend learning lines from tv shows or remembering plotlines. If I read a book more than once, it makes more of an impression though. And if I read it when I was a child, even more so. Any psychologists out there able to enlighten me any? K.
Glad I’m not alone. Funny, last night in bed I was going over the plot of the book I’d been reading that day on the train, and then talked about it today as well (it’s a really good book!) so I wonder if those processes mean I’ll remember it longer …
[...] that happen to them in the course of the novel. If I read a novel I also have a vague chance of remembering something about it afterwards, but with a short story this is virtually impossible. And while writing a novel is an [...]
[...] keeping, and partly to remind me about the great books I’ve read, since I have a bad habit of not remembering books too well unless I actively think back on [...]
Leave your response!
Categories
Recent Comments
Blogroll
Calendar of Posts
Most Commented
Archives