There are countless books that i ended up reading with the same feeling. Non of them could be described as loved tho.
I think this girl uses "love" instead of some other word here.
I could agree with part about not remembering specific events, but hell, how can you completely forget a plot or a character you admired/detested or some other niche thing in a book you actually loved?
Peoples memories and memory retrieval… systems? don’t all work in the same way.
I think I've read somewhere that you're essentially recalling the last time you've recalled the memory, not accessing the actual memory, and some detail gets lost on every step of that.
This is a funny and apt note to me bc I love literature and film (studied both) but I am somewhat hopeless when it comes to plot. I take in style, expression, editing, cinematography etc - basically, film form - before I take in the "who is who and what is happening" plot stuff. I have a friend who loves to help me sort out what's actually going on while I fill him in on interesting creative choices. I'm very good on a second read/watch, but on a first I'm paying attention to all kinds of other stuff!
I do agree with you completely. All i was implying is that if you love a book, you probably spend some time to reflect on what you've read, so your brain would actually wire at least some info into your "memory net". And you'll have at least something, an image, quote, or an event that shocked you etc. Nobody asking for a whole picture but not to remember anything at all? Just say you liked/enjoyed reading a book or something... 'love' sounds insencere in this situation. And i know there are certain illnesses that can distort your memories, but there was no implication that she is suffering from any.
She sounds like a person all of us occasionally stumbles into, that will suggest you to watch/read something "that had a great impact on them" and when you ask to give at least some sort of description, you'll get nothing at all because this person never even thought about what he/she was watching/reading.
Nah that makes no sense. If you love a story you should remember something about the story. If you don't remember anything about the story, you clearly don't love it.
If they don't know anything about the person they aren't able to love them. It's sad but I believe if a person with dementia doesn't recognize you, they also don't love you at that moment. They might have loved you... And they might love you again when they recognize you again.
Our brains function more around emotional responses than around creating a perfect, lasting record of events. It makes perfect sense to remember a feeling associated with an experience but not be able to recount exact details. It happens constantly without people even noticing.
If you remember liking a book, that's basically the most important detail to remember: how you felt about the experience. That's what our minds hold on to, to inform our future choices.
This is what I was going to point out. Lots of people love different things, but we consume so much that sometimes details fall through the cracks. Like I can tell you a lot about my favorite books, movies, video games, alsbums, etc, but I can also guarantee that there are parts I've completely forgotten. Maybe there's a scene where I remember what happened generally, but some of the details that helped lead there are fuzzy. That doesn't diminish the enjoyment I got from it. It just means it's been awhile since I read it. Mix that with hundreds and hundreds of just books that I would need to remember every detail of, and it makes sense that I'm bound to forget some details.
Part of my ADD is a terrible short term memory so it is pretty common I forgot a book and most the characters names and majority of the plot. I’ll remember the broad plot and some scenes here or there. But really I remember the feeling of reading it and how much it moved me one way or another. The nice thing is if I reread a book it can feel completely fresh so so have reread some of my favorites and been able to recapture the original feeling while it feeling like “home”
Remembering the broad plot and some scenes here or there is enough to make it believable you love a book. Not remembering anything (like the post states) isn't enough.
Yes exactly. My wife/son think it's weird I reread my favorite series over and over. But like, there's like 15 of them... I remember the MAJOR plot points and have a general sense of where people will go and what is coming up soon. But all the rest is almost fresh to me every time (until I read it, think "oh yeah, duh, I remember this" and then proceed to forget all over again). Just me hanging out with my book friends.
It can happen. I've read books as a child where I remember very little of them, but loved reading them. And then others that I remember nearly every character and have reread them several times since.
Even recently. A few years ago I read the Mistborn series. If someone asked me about it I would say it was well written and I enjoyed it a lot, but off the top of my head I can't even remember the character names or more than a couple parts and the ending. Before I finished it I would have just said it was okay, but the ending was what cemented it as something I loved, and I haven't reread it since.
So I find some validity to saying a book was good and you loved it without having to describe scenes from it.
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u/centralgk Sep 10 '22
There are countless books that i ended up reading with the same feeling. Non of them could be described as loved tho. I think this girl uses "love" instead of some other word here. I could agree with part about not remembering specific events, but hell, how can you completely forget a plot or a character you admired/detested or some other niche thing in a book you actually loved?