Disaster! I thought I'd made some headway across the great sea of literature, but it turns out I can barely remember any details of those books – classic or not – I've already finished
I have come to a terrible and shaming realisation, and I'm going to share it with you. I love reading (wait, that's not the realisation). I read when I was at school and at university. Now I read for fun and for work. I read to relax and to widen my horizons and because I can't really think of much else I'd rather be doing. I've read a lot. My bookshelves bulge.
But it turns out I can remember almost nothing of what I've read.
I already knew that less "important" books slide out of my mind fairly rapidly: I can sometimes find myself well into a thriller or a piece of romantic fiction before I work out I've read it before and I know exactly whodunnit or who ends up with whom. But it turns out the classics I thought were a solid part of my reading CV are just as forgettable.
Knowledge of this immense stupidity was brought home to me at the weekend. We had friends staying. We were talking about books. Great. My friend had just read Catch-22. Great – I've read that, I thought. I said it was hilarious. And then I stopped. I literally could not remember a thing about the novel, other than that it is funny. There's a character called Major Major Major Major. And it's on an island … isn't it?
Momentary aberration? It wasn't. He'd also recently read Brave New World. I love that book, I thought. I love dystopian fiction, and I'd definitely cite it as one of my top dystopian reads. But could I remember anything about it? Here is what I could dredge up. There's a savage. There's a lighthouse. Something about eugenics.
Thinking about it, I was horrified to find that much of the classic literature I've read has been boiled down in my mind to a few scant details. War and Peace – I was so proud of finishing that one! But if I had to say something, anything, about it now … hmm. I mainly remember being confused by all the nicknames.
It gets worse the more I think about it. Tom Jones? Well, I could tell you there's a foundling. And it's by Henry Fielding. Important insights, for sure. The Great Gatsby? Boats beating against the current. Daisy. Death. The shame! It's only about 100 pages long.
This is a nightmare. There I was, thinking that I had made some headway across the great sea of literature, and it turns out I'd never left the shore. Not that I want to turn reading into a numbers game, but I thought I had ticked at least some of the great works off my list. And more great books are coming all the time.
Here's something I do remember: the autodidact in Sartre's Nausea, reading his way alphabetically through every book in the library. Please tell me that my reading life isn't equally hopeless … or at least that I'm not alone …
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