What are some books you’ve read but remember absolutely nothing about them?
Weather read years ago and they just didn’t stick with you, or a reader rushing through and not paying attention, if you’ve been reading long enough you’ve experienced this. Oddly enough the impressions some of the books left was positive
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Pride and Prejudice
When I first read "The moon and the bonfires" I absolutely loved it, the way nostalgia is portrayed in that book is amazing.
But yet after finishing it, I ended up forgetting character names and even the ending in a couple of months.
Now, it randomly entered my mind again and it's been days of constantly thinking about it.
It probably deserves a re-reading.
Lots of Japanese novels:Kokoro, Snow Country, Naomi, The Woman in the Dunes, Murakami’s Egg Wonderland book, Temple of the Golden Pavilion, I remember enjoying them…but I can’t remember a thing. It’s as if I didn’t even read them. This is probably close to 10 years ago though
This Side of Paradise (liked but can’t remember a thing)
Under the Volcano (hated, unsure if I even finished it)
The Tin Drum (some snatches of it but most is forgotten)
Eleven Kinds of Lonliness (not a single story though I recall a jazz pianist in a club maybe)
Austerlitz (remember liking it, loved Rings of Saturn though)
By Night in Chile (not a thing, not even an impression, just a memory of physically reading it)
Hopscotch (I maintain a fond impression)
In my defense most of these books were probably read close to a decade ago. Perhaps a rereads is due…but such a long backlog already
>Lots of Japanese novels:Kokoro, Snow Country, Naomi, The Woman in the Dunes, Murakami’s Egg Wonderland book, Temple of the Golden Pavilion, I remember enjoying them…but I can’t remember a thing. It’s as if I didn’t even read them. This is probably close to 10 years ago though
Aren't most of them surrealist? They are easy to read and get you invested but at the end of the day the action feels like a fever dream and is easy to forget. Having a depressed main character with little development or motivation adds to this
Just like a piece of jazz, it sounds good but it's easily forgettable
notes from the underground. completely unmemorable after reading TBK.
I'm trying to decide if this is true for me for any book, usually with this or that book I can always remember something. I have quite a remarkable memory, or so I've been told.
I guess all the Animorphs books I read in elementary school? I can remember lots of details about lots of those books but there's gotta be one of them that's completely slipped my mind. Or the Hardy Boys books I read in 4th grade.
I definitely remember multiple details of all the Tom Clancy books I read in middle school.
Early Nabokov (Except Mary). Cared for the middle work little, despite appreciating him. Ada's the only one that's stuck vividly in memory.
I forgot that I had read Heart of a Dog for 7 years
Anything contemporary, I struggle understanding contemporary English in everyday conversation (which is mortifying, for I am not ESL or ESL-like in any way shape or form).
To me, contemporary novels read tlike this:
>"Mup da doo didda," William Kaiser said.
>"Blah blah blah" retorted Retorty McRetortface.
>"Po me gub bidda."
>Yadda yadda yadda."
>"By the way, a plane crashed into your Mother."
>"lolwut?"
Excuse me for saying this, but these conversations are, in my opinion, impenetrable text walls, the best books tell a story, not describe the happenings.
Can't remember a single Nancy Drew plot
All of Dostoevsky’s slop. I had a phase in my teens, but I can’t remember a single thing.
>Weather
i used to read a lot of self-help, self-development bullshit when i was 18 - 20 years old. after years i forgot everything.
I've forgotten most of what I read before I was 24 or so. Probably for good reason or depression and drugs. I know I read a Maugham book, I think it was the Razor's Edge, but remember nothing about it. I think I liked it, or whatever it was getting at went over my head; it probably led me to getting into eastern religion.
I wonder how much of forgetting a book is there being nothing memorable about it and how much is taking so much from it that there's nothing left to chew on.
Could barely understand what being qua being meant at the time
I used to leaf through Encyclopedias (especially a 1978 hard copy Brittanica) and read the proper name entries for fun, or things like Atlantic Brief Lives and the Little Brown Book Of Anecdotes, despite already knowing that I'd forget almost all of what I've read, during casual survey. It's the finds I remember, and still can't account for my own taste in them, other than than pleasure in the quiet life, where irony has a gentle tone.
basically nothing happens in the book. there is literally no plot. its just Bateman's vapid thoughts and the occasional murder/rape/torture.
If I can't remember ANYTHING about the book I either didn't read it or it didn't count. Even forgettable YA--No More Dead Dogs, Timothy of the Cay...I remember ONE THING about them. If it's a series forget it. I know I read like three of the Charlie Bone books and I can remember the bird girl.
I read some 800 page scifi slop a few years ago and only realized in the last chapter that I'd already read it. I don't remember what it was so I'm damned to do it again.
Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King.
Pretty much everything I read in school except for a handful of books.
everything given enough time