Reading

In recent years, my audiobook listening has increased dramatically. So, too, the overall number of books I’ve finished. The majority of these have been in the science fiction and fantasy realms (ha), but now and then I try to read a Newbery Medal winner, religious book, or something nonfiction that I think of as “edifying.”

I track my reading on Goodreads and usually rate, if not review, what I finish. Now and then I may write about my reading experiences here. Sometimes they overlap and intertwine with my running experiences. (I have portions of trail in nearby mountains that take me back to book scenes I’d listened to at those points.) Sometimes I try to create reading experiences by hiking or finding somewhere nice to read. Sometimes on a certain stretch of road I will hearken back to a book or series I was absorbed in for mile after mile of a road trip down the same stretch.

Often, I’m just washing the dishes or brushing my teeth while I listen to a story. Maybe you can relate.

(Edit 04/27/20: I was introduced to this New Yorker article about forgetting what we read in a climbthestacks YouTube video a couple weeks ago (that’s not a great sentence, but hopefully my meaning comes across). The author described a very similar experience to my own in how he forgets what he reads but often remembers impressions or circumstances, dreads the “cocktail party trap,” and considers rereading suspicious but important. Reading it made me think of this blog post—and all the times I’ve fallen into that party trap and had to bluntly say: “Oh, I’ve read it. But I don’t recall a thing. I just remember liking it.”)