Natalia_Sylvester_“I’ve struggled with this realization for a while now. I tell myself I’ll go back and reread them, but there’s always some shiny new book I’m dying to read instead, and endless piles on my shelves I still must get to. When I consider how many books I consume each year, I suppose it’s not so bad. Books are like people, I often think: full of depth and character, interesting to some of us but not others. Like the many people I encounter in my daily life, I can’t remember everything about them.” – Latina novelist Natalia Sylvester, author of Chasing the Sun: A Novel’>Chasing the Sun, via Book Riot.

The TeleRead take: So what books do you love even if so many of the details have faded into the mist? What are you most likely to remember? To forget? Go beyond the obvious, please. Ulysseus absolutely is off limits. And genre fiction is absolutely fine.

3 COMMENTS

  1. Heaven by Ian Stewart. I have vague memories of the subject matter and plot, but strong memories of absolutely loving it – best book I’d read that year. I must get around to re-reading it at some point.

  2. Jude the Obscure makes my list as top five novels of all time, but it has been more than 15 years since I read it. I can give general overview of story, character, and mood – most of the details have been lost, of course.

    More interesting, I think, is rereading books you loved long ago, but didn’t care much for later in life. In high school, I love the sword and sorcery stories of Micheal Moorcock, but I found them kind of dull when I attemp to reread them after turning 40.

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