/lit/ - Literature

>a year ago

I have trouble remember books i read a few months ago beyond vague impressions

There is no real point in reading if you don't possess photographic memory.

Placing a book on your shelf, cracking the spine and convincing yourself that you read it about two years ago is the same as actually sitting down and reading through it.

>b-but it shapes my self in an unexplainable and magical way like childhood trauma
"no"

>>8800600
I only read because I enjoy it I dont care about it "shaping me"

>>8800609
>I only x because I enjoy it

The pure epitome of plebdom

>>8800580
i remember their content but forget their names

>>8800617
>calls someone a pleb while posting on 4chan

You guys are a riot

>>8800580
I have a pretty solid memory of books I read part way through and have dropped for a year or more.

I'll pick up the book again and read perhaps a page and then over the course of the day all the previous chapters I read ages ago come back to me.

>>8800623
>Everyone who does x is a pleb
>I do x, but since I KNOW how incredibly pleb that is I am superior

blep

>>8800600
>possessing a photographic memory
Therefore there's no point for anyone to read.

>>8800640
>being a pleb is bad

>>8800580
I have trouble remembering what I just wrote

>>8800660
I find it hard to remember what I was after writing

Spleen
J'ai plus de souvenirs que si j'avais mille ans.

Un gros meuble à tiroirs encombré de bilans,
De vers, de billets doux, de procès, de romances,
Avec de lourds cheveux roulés dans des quittances,
Cache moins de secrets que mon triste cerveau.
C'est une pyramide, un immense caveau,
Qui contient plus de morts que la fosse commune.
— Je suis un cimetière abhorré de la lune,
Où comme des remords se traînent de longs vers
Qui s'acharnent toujours sur mes morts les plus chers.
Je suis un vieux boudoir plein de roses fanées,
Où gît tout un fouillis de modes surannées,
Où les pastels plaintifs et les pâles Boucher
Seuls, respirent l'odeur d'un flacon débouché.
Rien n'égale en longueur les boiteuses journées,
Quand sous les lourds flocons des neigeuses années
L'ennui, fruit de la morne incuriosité,
Prend les proportions de l'immortalité.
— Désormais tu n'es plus, ô matière vivante!
Qu'un granit entouré d'une vague épouvante,
Assoupi dans le fond d'un Sahara brumeux;
Un vieux sphinx ignoré du monde insoucieux,
Oublié sur la carte, et dont l'humeur farouche
Ne chante qu'aux rayons du soleil qui se couche.
— Charles Baudelaire

Spleen
I have more memories than if I'd lived a thousand years.
A heavy chest of drawers cluttered with balance-sheets,
Processes, love-letters, verses, ballads,
And heavy locks of hair enveloped in receipts,
Hides fewer secrets than my gloomy brain.
It is a pyramid, a vast burial vault
Which contains more corpses than potter's field.
— I am a cemetery abhorred by the moon,
In which long worms crawl like remorse
And constantly harass my dearest dead.
I am an old boudoir full of withered roses,
Where lies a whole litter of old-fashioned dresses,
Where the plaintive pastels and the pale Bouchers,
Alone, breathe in the fragrance from an opened phial.
Nothing is so long as those limping days,
When under the heavy flakes of snowy years
Ennui, the fruit of dismal apathy,
Becomes as large as immortality.
— Henceforth you are no more, O living matter!
Than a block of granite surrounded by vague terrors,
Dozing in the depths of a hazy Sahara
An old sphinx ignored by a heedless world,
Omitted from the map, whose savage nature
Sings only in the rays of a setting sun.
— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

>>8800580
I find it hard to remember what I was after writing

>>8800580
I can remember most of the plot and themes of every book I've read since middle school. Sentences that left a particularly strong impression from 14 years ago I can still paraphrase near verbatim. Honestly if you can't remember a book after a year there's no way you're engaging with the text on a meaningful level. Either that or you did drugs in high school and melted your brain.

>>8800691
Is slow and more careful reading more advisable?

I see the speed reading meme being spread around a lot. I've recently picked up Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book and it sheds light on absorbing as much as possible from the book.