{"id":59724,"date":"2026-03-08T01:00:45","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T06:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=59724"},"modified":"2026-03-07T10:12:44","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T15:12:44","slug":"qotd-reading-books-versus-remembering-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/03\/08\/qotd-reading-books-versus-remembering-books\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Reading books versus remembering<\/em> books"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As a gullible young man, I fell for the big lie that books are improving. “Reading develops the mind,” my parents told me when I begged for a TV in my bedroom. My teachers seconded the motion, as did one hundred per cent of the world’s self-serving authors. “Reading makes you smarter,” they all said. “Reading gives you endless knowledge and reduces stress. Reading makes you human<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

“What about people who can’t<\/em> read?” I asked, thinking of all the illiterates in my year group at school. “Don’t they have human rights, too?”<\/p>\n

My mother snorted with laughter, as if I’d told a dirty joke. “Oh, that’s precious!” she said, wiping her eyes, and I raced upstairs to bury my nose in the first book I could find.<\/p>\n

To be fair, I’d no idea back then what the passage of time does to the brain; that knowledge is never accrued, only forgotten. As an adult, I’ve trudged my way through the entire oeuvres<\/em> of a good number of literary giants, and not only do I remember bugger all about what I read in any<\/em> of those books, I’ve entirely forgotten that I read the vast majority of those books at all<\/em>. Worse, when people ask my opinion about one of their renowned authors, I frown bewilderedly and say, “Who?”, their very existence having somehow been completely blotted from my mind. In my lowest moments, I even add, “Oh, I’ve never heard of him\/her. I’ll have to give him\/her a try. Which book of his\/hers would you recommend I start with?” Only when I\u2019m several chapters into one of these titles does a muffled bell ring somewhere at the back of my broken brain. Hang on<\/em>, I think, didn’t I read something a bit like this once before?<\/em> Then I accuse Dostoyevsky of plagiarism.<\/p>\n

Dominic Hilton, “All Booked Up”, The Critic<\/em><\/a>, 2020-08-17.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a gullible young man, I fell for the big lie that books are improving. “Reading develops the mind,” my parents told me when I begged for a TV in my bedroom. My teachers seconded the motion, as did one hundred per cent of the world’s self-serving authors. “Reading makes you smarter,” they all said. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,57,41],"tags":[86,294],"class_list":["post-59724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-humour","category-quotations","tag-criticism","tag-literature"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-fxi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59724"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101240,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59724\/revisions\/101240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}