Forget What Read

Having noted a few weeks ago that I'd hardly read any books, I now realize that I can remember hardly any of those that I have read. Remind me, what happens at the end of Atonement; what are the names of the characters in Birdsong; what was the difference between A Wild Sheep Chase and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle? But, most of all, remind me never to do Contemporary Fiction as a specialist subject on Mastermind.

I do remember quite well some of the books we read at school and wrote essays about and I do retain a general impression of what books were about and what certain writers are like. I can do you an impromptu lecture on The Woodlanders whenever you're ready and I'll outline some main points about Patrick Hamilton if required. But reading Revolutionary Road again after only a few years, it came almost as fresh off the page as when I'd first read it.

I'm always impressed by academics who seem to be able to talk about, and certainly know about, almost any writer you care to mention. Perhaps there's a special trick to that. But it's a minefield getting engaged in any discussion with them because it's only a matter of time before they take you off piste and I'm floundering like a complete illiterate.

There's nothing to be done about this, of course. It's not as if I actually need to remember any of this and nowadays I'll abandon a book at an early stage if I'm not enjoying it. It's for enjoyment, not self improvement, that I read books. Amateur in the real sense of 'for the love of it', not professional. It really doesn't matter but it does come as a bit of a scare when one wants to talk about a book you know you've read and you try to find it in your memory and there's nothing there. This Side of Paradise? Sure, let me see, now. No, I'm sorry, I can remember almost nothing about it.

There is a big advantage to this, which is I have quite a large collection of books that I can return to at any time and they'll be as good as new. That might come in useful, and occasionally has, when one knows there must be thousands of titles one ought to read but one simply doesn't know which of them to try.