/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14076848]

>read a book
>forget most of it in a year
>forget all of it in 5 years
>nothing but bits and pieces and overall impression left
What's the point, then?
And don't come at me pretending you're the superhuman exception with impeccable memory

[Anonymous No.14076853]

>>14076848
To hell with you

[Anonymous No.14076855]

>>14076848
jeongyeon best girl

[Anonymous No.14076873]

>>14076848
If you keep a journal, writing down memorable quotes and insights from the book can jog your memory years later.
If you can't recall what you've read, what's the point? Beyond the immediate physical pleasure of the act

[Anonymous No.14076896]

>>14076848
You could just re-read it. It's not a competition.

[Anonymous No.14076907]

>>14076896
>dude just reread the same 50 books for the rest of your life lmao

[Anonymous No.14076929]

>>14076848
Re-read it, I do it from time to time and I feel like I'm reading them for the first time.

[Anonymous No.14076942]

With fiction, I don't struggle much with this problem at all. When reading a novel, it's important to be vulnerable to impressions. It's much easier recalling memories if they're attached to feelings. A general example would be: "I didn't like X. Why didn't I like it? Because of A and B" And it's not necessarily remembering the details and dialogue that is important, but more the general feel of the prose, the themes and how the novel created them, as well as its message if it has one. Also, knowing to some degree how the book fits into larger contexts, i.e literary, historic and philosophic ones is important both for understanding a work, but also remembering it as you can attach the work to other entries in your brain.

[Anonymous No.14076944]

I break the spine of books when I've finished with them

[Anonymous No.14076963]

>>14076848
>WTF WHY CAN'T I REMEMBER SHIT AND EVERYTHING, ITS REALLY PERPLEXING, WHOAH, I CANT EVEN THINK WHAT MIGHT BE CAUSING THIS. ITS LIKE THERE IS A CLUE SOMEWHERE.
DER CUMBRAIN.

[Anonymous No.14076968]

>>14076848
Sure noones memory is perfect but im certain most people don't forget a book in 5 years before they turn 70

[Anonymous No.14077012]

>>14076848
You can read ebooks and take notes or just re-read books. Or you can write summaries after you have read a book.

>What's the point, then?
The pleasure of reading
Inform yourself about a topic (especially when you read non-fiction books)
Hear new stories and ideas
Sharpen your psychological understanding

But the truth is there is no point in anything. If you waste your time with books or with something else plays absolutely no role.

[Anonymous No.14077039]

>>14076848
It really doesn't work like this. I'm probably a little older than most people here. Five years doesn't seem very long ago to me. I can remember books I read in 2014 very well, and it's not because I'm some sort of savant. You likely have this issue for two reasons. The first is that you are young and five years is something you see as a third or a fourth of your lifetime. The second is that you are not very accustomed to reading. As you get better at reading, the scenes and characters become more vivid, as memorable as lived experiences.

[Anonymous No.14077045]

>>14076907
most books aren't worth reading desu

[Anonymous No.14077047]

Interestingly, I constantly encounter situations in my day-to-day routine where something would remind me of a novel I've read years ago, or something would trigger a memory of a beautiful paragraph from the book I had long forgotten. You know, the whole madeleine effect from Proust. I'm fine with reading just for these moments, they make me feel like literature truly worked for me, and I don't need all these hundreds of novels to stay on active recall in my conscious memory.

[Anonymous No.14077055]

>>14076848
If you forget everything you've read after 5 years, either the book was bad or your memory is bad.

[Anonymous No.14077212]

>>14076848
So you can read it again and experience it all once more.

[Anonymous No.14077244]

>>14076848
>Eat a fine meal
>Shit it out hours later
>Work hard, get married to your high school sweetheart
>Firstborn is a nigger bastard, she takes half of what you worked so hard for, you start drinking and doing drugs and get knifed in the street, dying shitting your pants
What's the point of anything, eh? Why don't you tell me?

[Anonymous No.14077249]

>>14077244
Can't americans go for 5 minutes without mentioning their cuck fetish?

[Anonymous No.14077254]

>>14077249
That's not an answer cuckboi

[Anonymous No.14077257]

>>14076848
>“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”

[Anonymous No.14077263]

>I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.
I wish this board had higher standards for content. It's hard to start a thread that's even vaguely related to literature and even harder to keep it from getting derailed with memes and discussion of porn/cuckoldry. Sage.

[Anonymous No.14077266]

>>14077257
/thread

Why do people think the purpose of reading books is to become a trivia machine? Their contribution is abstract, a fullness you can only feel

[Anonymous No.14077275]

>>14077257
>>14077263
Cope: the quote

[Anonymous No.14077381]

>>14076855
weird way of spelling sana

[Anonymous No.14077399]

Read it three times and I guarantee you will remember most of it. Still remember most of Catcher and Slaughterhouse because I read them thrice in middle/high school even though I haven't read them in over 10 years.

You can also keep it fresh in your memory by discussing it on /lit/ from time to time.

[Anonymous No.14077405]

>>14076848
What’s the point of doing anything if most of your memories of it vanish within a few weeks?

[Anonymous No.14077450]

Re-reading things is essential to actually remembering and understanding the contents. The only books I can remember clearly after the first read are ones that affect me on a fundamental level. I find that it helps to go back to a book I enjoyed after a few months of reading other things. It's pretty startling how differently you read a book on the second or third time through it.

[Anonymous No.14077472]

>>14076855
I'm more of a Jihyo person myself desu

[Anonymous No.14077527]

>>14076848
Overall impressions, key points, and themes are the most important parts anyways, no?

[Anonymous No.14077542]

>>14076855
>>14077472
literally the most busted members

[Anonymous No.14077573]

>>14077542
At least she didn't betray her nation to bow down to Chink Cock
youtube.com/watch?v=Nb6RESOP5zo

[Anonymous No.14077615]

>>14076848
Books are ultimate form of imaginative escapism and training of abstract thinking. How it affects brain and intelligence, thinking processes and decision making is more important than remembering whole book for years to come. As long as you keep reading, it will keep affecting your perception of the world around you. Reading allows you to peer into someone's inner world, forming thoughts of how that person was thinking, allow it to reflect on your own. The change in your mind from reading expands horizons on human intelligence.

[Anonymous No.14077680]

>>14077573
Taiwanese are genetically chinese they were the ones who fled from Mao

[Anonymous No.14077707]

>>14077573
damm to think one day there could be hollywood roasties having to bow down to big red china one day like this
kinda hot

[Anonymous No.14077724]

>>14076848
The point was the friends you made along the way

[Anonymous No.14077788]

>>14077680
Taiwan is the rightful government of China.

[Anonymous No.14077794]

Wonder what groups of Asian female smell like

[Anonymous No.14077843]

>>14077257
Is that Schopenhauer? I remember reading an aphorism of his that said pretty much the same thing. 'To expect someone to remember everything he's read, is like expecting him to stll contain everything he's eaten.'

[Anonymous No.14077898]

>>14076848
Why do you watch movies? Same problem

[Anonymous No.14078234]

>>14077898
Audio-visual information is much easier to retain. Plus, movies present a lower time investment - 2 hours vs average 15-20 hours to get through a typical novel

[Anonymous No.14078247]

>>14078234
Do you watch television series? Play video games? Browse 4chan?

[Anonymous No.14078328]

Well aside from experience that you have in the moment and then some core memories that basically become personal experiences you enhance your pattern recognition in variety of ways. As a result you begin to appreciate more nuanced stuff, understand people on a deeper level, begin to appreciate the language, rhythm of things, after a certain point you may want to add to an idea in a way that has a chance of being unexplored like that before. Also you are molding the current "you" and while you forget majority of what was in a book the stuff that you found important will stick with you, has a chance of shaping you in a way that you may feel as "truthful". Also I've noticed that while i'm borderline unable to visualize something there is this very strange experiential level, i call it grasping or sensing, that isn't producing a full picture of something, barely has colors and details but, after reading or daydreaming, feels like a legit experience, basically it doesn't register like a photography but a sense of a memory, anyway after mostly avoiding books i now appreciate this larger than life feeling: while the silver guy in hyperion is just a three meter tall metallic lizard person if drawn it felt so much more in the book.

[Anonymous No.14079494]

>>14078234
I definitely remember just as much from literature as I do from movies.
Here I'll prove it:
Great Expectations:
First of all the opening line is kino about the hero not being able to pronounce his name and the hour of his birth and shit. Anyways Pip, who lives with his uncle Joe, helps out a creepy bum in like a graveyard, the bum is a prisoner or whatever who's escaping. Anyways some time goes by and Pip falls in love with Estelle who is Miss Havishams adopted daughter. Anyways Pip starts getting lots of money, moves to London, meets some ginger s*yboy, also a lawyer Mr Jaggers, who has a hilarious assistant, thinks Miss Havisham is his sponsor, turns out its a lie and his sponsor is Magwich, the bum he saved, he's really disappointed. Havisham was jilted, Estelle is her creepy pet project. Estelle ends up marrying some doofus Chad. Pip loses all his money and then reconciles with Joe. There's even a great line I still quote to this day about how you must get your hands on PORTABLE PROPERTY. And then there's the revised ending in which Pip sees Estelle and she's all sad.

It's a good book, I read it five years ago once. I am pretty sure I remember it in as much detail as American Gangster a film I saw 2 years ago. Maybe you're just a brainlet or you watch quipshit that's easy to memorise due to memes. But audiovisual media is not that much easier to remember than textual.

[Anonymous No.14080057]

>>14079494
Oh, wow, you gave a vague description of an incredibly popular book that's been referenced and parodied in several other forms of media. There's no way those references and parodies could've helped you remember those details, no, sir.

[Anonymous No.14080574]

Just go back to your visualisations my dude. It's like remembering a dream. You just need to be reminded if one part and then you will know the rest.

[Anonymous No.14080591]

>>14077794
Just like any other group of girls you dumb faggot ass frog poster.

[Anonymous No.14080607]

>>14076848
>don't come at me pretending you're the superhuman exception with impeccable memory

But I am. To this day, I don't save phone numbers because I can easily remember all of them.

As for the topic, reread and make notes.

[Anonymous No.14081548]

>>14077794
expensive perfume with a soft hint of rice

[Anonymous No.14081553]

>>14077843
Emerson said the specific thing you were replying to.

[Anonymous No.14081720]

Would you give up on reading to have a loving qt asian gf, /lit/?
Me? I'd burn down entire libraries while laughing like a maniac. Reading is nothing but a misery cope. Fuck reading.

[Anonymous No.14081785]

>>14076848
“Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.”

nabokov is a contrarian faggot but hes right, you havent really read a book if youve read it only once