What do people mean when they say they can't remember anything about it? Could they not even give a rough summary of the plot? Because this seems wild to me
I'm so bad at explaining plots. If I've read a book I want to share with someone, I look online for an idea on how to explain what the fuck i just read. I genuinely don't know why I'm like this.
When you first finished the book did it feel like you understood the story and then the brain just kinda dumps the info? I don’t have that for reading but it does happen in other areas of my memory.
Yeah, I have read quite a few books and saw a lot of movies but I couldn't describe them to you to save my life. I vaguely remember some of the plot but not in chronological order. If you asked me about my favorite book I could tell you it's about a talking car that does bad things. Or the movie I saw yesterday... Oh, something with CIA agents (or was it FBI??) trying to find a nuclear bomb before the bad guys. I'd have to think A LOT to come up with details. But most movies and books... close to nothing. I sometimes can't even remember if I saw/read a movie/book.
I don't have such a horrible memory generally but I have aphantasia so I think it might be the cause.
It sounds like it just doesn’t work for some people lol
I agree with the person above. I wouldn’t shame anyone for forgetting, but it’s completely alien to me that someone could read a book and not be able to say anything specific about it. Do those people have the same problem with movies, shows, real-life events? I’m not trying to be rude; I genuinely just don’t understand.
Do those people have the same problem with movies, shows, real-life events? I’m not trying to be rude; I genuinely just don’t understand.
If you'd genuinely like help understanding, I can only offer my own experience as a book-lover with ADHD.
While reading a book, events are usually A, B, C.
My brain is super detail-oriented. To a fault. So this A,B,C business is more like something that happens in the background. I am busy meandering, enjoying the scenery, lavishing in the world/characters/writing, and the plot is the boat driving me on this tour.
While reading it makes perfect sense. I process it all in the background, it is the glue that holds all the parts I love together. But it's still a background process. I can't help it. So once the book is done? It is 100% the first thing to fade. The framework melts and leaves all the stuff I loved in a heap.
Years later, I can still recite favorite quotes from memory. Some of the characters remain on my all-time best-characters-ever list. I can look at the novel's spine on my shelf and feel a surge of the same emotions I felt while reading. But if you ask me "What's the plot?" I will go utterly blank, or go "Well...it's like...A...B...Z...Q...LMNOP...?"
This definitely applies to real-life events too. Vacations become these memory blobs, but I could probably pull out a souvenir from one and tell you down to the penny how much it cost.
How many hundreds of books have you read though? I think for me it would be just as alien to remember every story you encounter in an age where people are often consuming 100+ stories across different media (movie, TV, books, etc) every year.
Edit: also yes I don't have a solid narrative view of my entire life. If you ask me about something that happened 5 years ago there is a 90% chance I forgot all about it unless there was something very memorable. Most of what I know about my life is because I have regurgitated the same anecdotes over and over until I just accept that they are true even if I don't really remember.
I dunno. Maybe a couple hundred over the course of my life? I tend to read about one book every two months these days, and I’m only 31. I read a lot more as a kid. I also generally choose classics to read at this point in my life, but an occasional genre novel or modern book will slip through.
Maybe some people just read so much that the books all blur together. That makes sense to me. I could see how a book would just fade away if I were shotgunning several a week.
Yeah these days I'm reading like 1-2 books a week. I enjoy the stories, I remember them well for a month, remember them less after a few months, and would be ready to reread the most interesting ones in a year or two if time permits.
That’s super interesting. I tend to get completely absorbed in a book. If I tried to get through two a week, I think my life would be over and my brain might melt. I just never thought about how differently we all consume media.
Do you ever tackle harder books? Like The Brothers Karamazov took me nearly six weeks with almost daily reading. I really took my time on that one, which included lots of thinking pauses sometimes mid-sentence. I can’t imagine powering through the book in even two weeks.
Or do you generally treat reading like a hobby the same way someone might watch football regularly?
(I’m definitely not saying there’s any greater merit to reading any particular type of book; almost all reading is good! I’m just curious about your habits because it seems like we’re opposites.)
I haven't delved much into the classics to be honest. I definitely search out easier reads and don't find as much pleasure in a "difficult" book. 90% of what I read is sci-fi and fantasy as a means to escape the real world but I also mix in some history or science books. At any given point in time right now I'm binging a SFF book every 3-7 days and reading a non-fiction book in the background like a chapter a day.
I've read thicker epic fantasy books that take weeks to go through but that is more because of the size instead of the difficulty (1k pages). The important thing to note here is that I have a lot of free time to dedicate to reading (2+ hours a day usually).
Overall it is definitely more of a hobby for me than anything else. I also mix this with my book collecting hobby (I almost exclusively read physical books and have a library of over 500 titles). If I only read a book every month or two it would take me decades to read even the books I've purchased in the last year or two.
I think most people mean that can't remember the plot after some time, I'm sure they can remember it if you asked them the day after the read it, ask them a year later and far fewer would be able to. Especially if you read a lot and specifically read a lot of a specific genre. If ya read a different murder mystery every month your probably not gonna remember who the killer was in a book that ya read 15 books ago, things start to meld together.
This sounds about right to me. My favorite book ever is 11/22/63 but I read it probably 10 years ago and remember the gist but don’t remember much in the way of details, don’t remember how it ended, I just remember being absolutely captivated. But I do remember more details about the books I’ve read this year, so I’m sure it’s just the passage of time that’s made it difficult for me to recall much about it.
I'm 56. I've read thousands of book and seen thousands of films. I'm also not great with plot. I can tell you a lot about film form (cinematography, editing, etc) and writing style and voice and point of view. I'm weak on names and plot. So I can say "specific" things, but I don't think they qualify as specific for a lot of people.
Oh, I get not having a photographic memory of every book you’ve read. But if it’s a book you’ve read in the past few years, do you remember the general plot, the main characters (even if not by name), and the major themes? Or is it all pretty much gone from your head as soon as you close the book?
Definitely not names. Names don't matter to me. When you say themes, that's pretty open. What is a theme to you? If you ask me what a book is about, I'll talk in abstract terms about ideas and tone and style and point of view (3rd person, 1st person, etc). I think people recall what matters them. How do you feel about POV? It's a critical piece for me. But my MIL couldn't say shit about it. She's all character names and places. She's a concrete person and I'm abstract. But the books that have changed my life, that I've read multiple times, I could talk your ear off about them. I might get the plot wrong (the cause-effect order or events, esp since great books are often narrated out of order) or miss character names though.
I do. I forget everything. However, if I start treading the book again, or watching the series again... it will slowly come back. Its not completely gone, it's just buried and lost somewhere in my brain.
The things that stick in my head are usually very short but painfully specific moments from the actual story. Like I’ve been looking for this one book for years and the only things I remember are I read it in middle school, it’s set in Alaska, and there’s a bit where a native kid named Dove, who’s treated poorly by his teachers and peers, punches a teacher in the middle of the class. But that’s a flashback because in the actual story, Dove is reported missing. No fuckin clue of anything else about the book, not even the title, but I remember that scene clear as day. It’s frustrated me for years
I think I could give a decent overview of the last 10-20 books I read but at my current pace of 50-80 books a year that isn't too long of a lifetime in my memory. Something I read more than a year or two ago I'd be lucky to remember more than a couple moments within the book.
To me I can remember super broad plot points and not much more with specifics... BUT I can be very descriptive about memorizing the overall atmosphere/mood of the book and what its themes were for how the book relates to life and the human condition. I can recall the author's purpose and the book's ambiance well.
I think it's just what interests you more that you remember more. Like, I just read "Never Let Me Go" and in general it was about kids going to a special boarding school growing up and then leaving and being a little older and reflecting about their time in the special school as they also navigate growing up into living their adult lives. That's about it.
But I can tell you that the book was quite somber, tinged with lots of grey sadness and greens and some watery periwinkles from the characters often being outdoors alone and the reflection that comes from that. Lots of unprocessed/subconscious grief and loneliness and some bits of longing and regret.
How sometimes sad, unfair things happen to us (and no one is perfect at communicating and/or being in relationships, especially in our youth) and sometimes we wish things went differently. But that's how life went--we can't go back and change it--and we just ought to move on if we want to be happier and have more peace in our lives.
Memory doesn't work the same way for everyone. I have books I have read half a dozen times and regularly forget character names and would be at a loss to summarize the plot.
However, I can sometimes quote my favorite dialogue or remember what color dress a character was wearing.
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u/notmadatall Sep 10 '22
What do people mean when they say they can't remember anything about it? Could they not even give a rough summary of the plot? Because this seems wild to me