Good and Bad.

Travelin’Oma, Week 2, Day 3. I am really enjoying this class even though it has been very hard for me.

Good and bad.

In some ways I have an excellent memory. I can remember phone numbers of friends from first grade, I can recall which month and year my book club has read each book, and I know almost all the words to many of the hymns at church – all without trying. Sometimes I work at it, however. When I taught middle school, I could memorize all 200 or so of my students’ first and last names and match them with their faces by the end of the first day. That took work, but it wasn’t too hard. I have a gift for things like that and am very, very grateful for this gift that I have been given by God.

However, when it comes to remembering plots or details from books, I am a failure. The details are certainly gone within about an hour of finishing the book and the plot has been stricken from my mind after about 6 months. Completely stricken. This is part of the reason that I keep a book journal, to at least remember what I have read and if I liked it, since it is likely that I won’t remember much more than that later on. Thus, my “Books to Read” list contains many books that I know I have read, but I couldn’t tell you one character or event that took place within the pages. Sometimes this makes me very sad. How many good books have slipped from my mind and aren’t there to relish in the quiet hours! Luckily, in addition to the bad side of forgetting the tales, there is also a good side. The good side is that each time I reread a book, I am almost always surprised by its twists and turns and enjoy it like the first reading – even if I have already read it five times before.

Here are five of the books that grace that list:

Books Read Long Ago (or not so long ago, in my case) Which It's Now Time To Reread
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman
West With the Night by Beryl Markham