3 ms·

I have trouble remembering book plots too (except in broad strokes). But what I find I do remember is a particular line here and there, something that sticks wi

I have trouble remembering book plots too (except in broad strokes). But what I find I do remember is a particular line here and there, something that sticks with me because it's just so well-put, or because it crystallizes something that was already in my head in some form. I can forget everything else about a book, but years later I'll still have a line kicking around in my head, word-for-word, because it just resonated with me. It's even gotten to the point that I've googled the line itself sometimes to remember what book it came from, at which point I'll usually give it a second read. Maybe I'm just weird though.

arethuza 14y ago
Speaking of "Weird", I don't think your attachment to particular lines or phrases is unusual at all. For example, high up my list of text which is burned into my memory is the opening of Espedair Street by Iain Banks: "Two days ago I decided to kill myself. I would walk and hitch and sail away from this dark city to the bright spaces of the wet west coast, and there throw myself into the tall, glittering seas beyond Iona (with its cargo of mouldering kings) to let the gulls and seals and tides have their way with my remains, and in my dying moments look forward to an encounter with Staffa’s six-sided columns and Fingal’s cave; or I might head south to Corryvrecken, to be spun inside the whirlpool and listen with my waterlogged deaf ears to its mile-wide voice ringing over the wave-race; or be borne north, to where the white sands sing and coral hides, pink-fingered and hard-soft, beneath the ocean swell, and the rampart cliffs climb thousand-foot above the seething acres of milky foam, rainbow-buttressed. Last night I changed my mind and decided to stay alive. Everything that follows is . . . just to try and explain." When I'm in a bookshop I sometimes find a copy of Espedair Street and read that again, even though I have at least two copies at home.

arethuza 14y ago

Speaking of "Weird", I don't think your attachment to particular lines or phrases is unusual at all. For example, high up my list of text which is burned into my memory is the opening of Espedair Street by Iain Banks: "Two days ago I decided to kill myself. I would walk and hitch and sail away from this dark city to the bright spaces of the wet west coast, and there throw myself into the tall, glittering seas beyond Iona (with its cargo of mouldering kings) to let the gulls and seals and tides have their way with my remains, and in my dying moments look forward to an encounter with Staffa’s six-sided columns and Fingal’s cave; or I might head south to Corryvrecken, to be spun inside the whirlpool and listen with my waterlogged deaf ears to its mile-wide voice ringing over the wave-race; or be borne north, to where the white sands sing and coral hides, pink-fingered and hard-soft, beneath the ocean swell, and the rampart cliffs climb thousand-foot above the seething acres of milky foam, rainbow-buttressed. Last night I changed my mind and decided to stay alive. Everything that follows is . . . just to try and explain." When I'm in a bookshop I sometimes find a copy of Espedair Street and read that again, even though I have at least two copies at home.