>I have always felt that the point of reading is not to remember everything you have read, it is more to shape the way you think. I can't agree with this more.

>I have always felt that the point of reading is not to remember everything you have read, it is more to shape the way you think. I can't agree with this more. As a kid I used to read a huge amount - my sister and I would swoop into the local library, check out twentyish books, and read them all by the return period of three weeks. Averaging a book a day, and I remember virtually nothing of it. I've recently gotten back into reading books, and after a couple weeks I still won't remember much detail about any particular book I read. But I'm still very aware of the experiences that they shared with me and the way reading them made me feel. A conversation with a friend recently spurred me to post an old thing that I wrote online. And I felt the same way, wondering if I was seeking some validation this way. But the experience I wrote about was incredibly influential on my life, and I think on the off chance that anyone reads it, it's valuable just to share that perspective. It's true that we're connected all the time, though I think a lot of the time people are too self-conscious to share things that are really personal, that might change the way others think. And so I would like to contribute towards that.