I’m not sure what it is, but since 2020 time has become awfully wiggly. Things that happened in 2020 feel like yesterday, unless it happened two weeks ago and I’ve completely forgotten about it. I’m wondering if life was so different in 2020 that my brain made some serious synapse connections. Either way, I was thinking about the sheer number of novels I remember in detail that I read about six years ago (2020) compared to books I’ve read recently that I couldn’t tell you anything about.
pandemic reads: feels like yesterday
- Some Sing, Some Cry by Ifa Bayeza and Ntozake Shange — read December 2020 with my mom and our newly-founded book club
- The Silence by Susan Allott — read November 2020 after looking for more Australian fiction
- The Vampire Gideon’s Suicide Hotline and Halfway House for Orphaned Girls by Andrew Katz — read October 2020 aloud to my spouse in our kitchen
- Paradise Cove by Jenny Holiday — read August 2020 after a Filipino blogger named Gil recommended it
- East Pittsburgh Downlow by Dave Newman — read August 2020 aloud to my spouse
- Have You Found Her? by Janice Erlbaum — read July 2020, a totally harrowing follow-up memoir about a lying foster daughter
- The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden — read June 2020, a magical, immersive Russian-set novel that proved an engrossing trilogy, read with the local library Zoom book club
- Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America by Nefertiti Austin — read June 2020, a look at how motherhood how-to books do not address adoption and foster care for Black women
- The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think by Jennifer Ackerman — read June 2020, helped me get over my fear of birds and calmed my amygdala down
- The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald — read May 2020, recommended by Bill, totally hilarious
- Love Literary Style by Karin Gillespie — read May 2020, recommended by Bill, a lovely look at “literary” vs. “popular” authors
- Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson by Judy Oppenheimer — read January 2020, a dark emotional story of a woman who was a victim of her time but a genius at her craft
- My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier — read January 2020, a frustratingly good read that gives us zero answers about who Rachel is
What was it that made these works memorable? Was it because I read many with other people? A deep focus afforded me by choosing books to avoid the pandemic reality? Either way, these works continue to crop up in my mind often.
you’re who now? books i read in the last year that are utter strangers
- Night Side of the River by Jeanette Winterson — read December 2025
- The Unmothers by Leslie J. Anderson — read October 2025
- Just Desserts by G.A. McKevett — read September 2025
- Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison — read August 2025
- The God of the Woods by Liz Moore — read May 2025
- Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth — read May 2025
- Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia — read February 2025
- Fatland by Frannie Zellman — read February 2025
- Portrait of a Feminist: A Memoir in Essays by Marianna Marlowe — read January 2025
How can a book I read less that twelve months ago be so foreign to me? In some cases, the plots didn’t stick, the characters weren’t treasured, or it’s possible my environment affected how I read. I noticed that the books I read during my internship, a time of great stress, stuck with me more than later months. Is there something to reading under duress that makes the experience memorable? I’d be interested to know what your thoughts are or if you know of any connection between traumatic times and memory.
Grab the Lapels 
Melanie- I find many books stay with me depending on where I am physically & emotionally. I seem to remember most of the books we read in our little book club.
Some books fall flat for me even though they have great reviews or was recommended to me. 🤦🏽♀️ Do you think my expectations are too high?
Maybe Books awakens something in us to keep as a treasure and/or just entertain us for the moment?~B ❤️
LikeLike
I kind of wondered if there was something “special” about COVID that made so many books memorable. It’s very weird to me!! I do know we started our book club because of COVID, so you’re wrapped up in those memories. Before our book club, I know we didn’t talk as often–it was a hard transition with me going from professor who had zero time for anyone to working at the library and then at home going nowhere ever. I think lately we’ve hit on a few books that were total duds and didn’t leave much for us to talk about, which is a bummer. The Shot Out My Eye book and that Earl Had to Die book both come to mind. Oh! I just thought of something! When we started our book club, we were also meeting every single week. I’ll bet that makes a huge difference!
I don’t think your expectations are too high. There are a whole lot of books that have high ratings that have zero depth to them. I think Americans are so stressed out right now that thinking too hard isn’t appealing. I did read an interesting article today that said because there is that new Wuthering Heights movie, folks are trying to read the book before they see the film. And–surprise–the book is REALLY HARD. Not only is it hard in general, but the author of the article had researched all these YouTube book reviewers saying they couldn’t get through it despite reading loads of classic novels in college and earning English degrees because they’ve been reading so many “fluffy” books (easy to read fantasy, romance, and historical fiction) that to keep their attention focused for an entire chapter of Wuthering Heights feels like AGONY. I think this says a lot and is part of why I’m against only reading the historical fiction, fantasy, and romance that is written to appeal to women. It’s so focused on feelings that the stories aren’t doing much to challenge readers.
LikeLike
Good question and I’m glad you wrote this post because I have been starting to think that it’s my age that has been affecting my poor memory of recent reads! I think perhaps you are right that reading under duress or in strange times has a great impact. I think these days I feel quite distracted in a wishy-washy way and so I’m not focusing as well on my reading as I did a few years ago. I can’t remember the titles of books I read a few months ago, let alone what they were about, but still are books I read 10 years ago that are strangers to me now so who knows?
LikeLike
I’m glad you noted that wishy-washy feeling, because I have a post coming up about that topic and its relationship to anxiety.
I would think that reading under duress would make us less focused, but so many of my memories of books I read during COVID are laser sharp. When I read outside, when I read in my home office, when I read at the folding card table in the living room that Nick worked at because everything was locked down. I can’t believe I even remember Bill recommending The Egg and I to me because suddenly I became very taken with nonfiction animal books. What are some books that you remember vividly?
LikeLike
I feel like I remember books I read when I was stressed less vividly. Maybe it’s differences in how people respond to stress? I tend to live in a bit of a fog, anyway!
LikeLike
I would 100% think that reading under duress would make me more foggy, more forgetful, but for scientific reasons I can’t explain, it was the opposite. Maybe if my body was seeking out danger more so because my brain knew about COVID and how things were scary, I was taking in more info and processing it?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I mostly remember only those books I write up, and even then I quite often have to read a synopsis to get my memory fired up. The Egg and I, I remember bits of, and I read it (Mum’s copy) in the early 1960s.
The Silence I barely remember – something to do with someone’s backyard (in Sydney) and an author from Britain?
LikeLike
The process of writing does help me remember some reviews, but there are so many I read and reviewed that didn’t stick with me because the book felt fairly blah. When I see that WordPress tells me I’ve posted 1,375 posts, my first thought is, “About what??”
I didn’t realize you read your mom’s copy of The Egg and I, and now I’m curious if she found it hilarious. The Silence was about someone’s backyard and a British author who moved to Australia. It was more generally about missing people and a white man keeping what he knows a secret.
LikeLike
I do find that books I discuss with other people tend to stay more fully-formed in my mind than others. Sometimes books I can recall reading on a certain trip or at a certain place have stronger memories attached and so I could see the Covid era being like that. And sometimes I have to search my own blog to remember if I read a book and what I thought of it!
LikeLike
Sometimes I 100% forgot I read a book, even one I reviewed! I do know that books I read with Biscuit in 2020 are ingrained in my memory; however, I don’t remember what we talked about! Isn’t that funny.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I knew I had read a Paul Auster but I had to look it up on my blog after I read your review so I could remember which one! It’s kind of sweet that it’s the fact you shared an experience with Biscuit that has stuck in your memory, more so than the book itself.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have almost the opposite experience with books I read during covid – things I would otherwise have remembered are just a giant blur! I’m about to reread The Blue Castle with some friends, and I know I read and enjoyed it during lockdown, but my memories are much less vivid than they would probably be if I’d read it in 2019. This year, I’m making a conscious effort to keep a book journal (since I’m no longer writing as many reviews) and I hope that’s going to help!
LikeLike
Right!? I would have thought duress = less memory ability. Perhaps the memories stem from all the connections I forged during COVID. I think that was around the time I first met up with you online. I met other bloggers, too, and most people sent me photos of themselves!
LikeLike
My ability to remember most books in detail is crap no matter what, but this post made me look up my “read in 2020” shelf on Goodreads and DAMN that was a good reading year. Just mostly excellent books all around. And I was also still reading books aloud with my son so that makes me want to cry with nostalgia a little bit.
LikeLike
Did you find that you read more books, or you just read more better books? Maybe that somehow happened to me: just more better books? I’m not sure. I do know that even though your son is getting older, reading out loud can still be a thing, if he’ll let it.
LikeLike
Better books! Or at least just a LOT of really good ones.
Oh believe me, if he had wanted me to continue reading aloud at night, I would have. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
So interesting! I think when we talk about books with other people we are more likely to remember them especially if we read them carefully for a book group or something. We have more memories attached to the book than just the reading of it. Same I think with “special times” like COVID or other events in our lives. Everything is heightened and so we are more likely to retain memories. But also I think it matters what sort of book you are reading and why. If it is a brain candy sort of book all plot and fluff, I’m not likely to have much memory of it a month later because I didn’t devote much attention to it and it was just an escapist comfort sort of read. But if I have spent time with the book, thought about the book, annotated the book, talked to others about the book, wrote down quotes from the book, etc, I’m much more likely to remember it months and even years later. So I guess I’m trying to say context and depth of attention matter, at least for me.
LikeLike
It’s funny that you mentioned the fluffy books, because I do know that during covid, one Filipino blogger reviewed this book that she described as something like a hunk and the seaside, so I read it. I figured, why not, let’s read something escapist during lockdown. I still remember that book a good deal! Isn’t that funny? And part of me wants to know the science behind what I’m describing, and another part of me knows that I’m not going to look it up right now because I have too much stuff on my brain right now.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s a good question you ask, and honestly, I’ve always found this myself as well, but I always just assumed it was a mixture of whatever else was going in my life at the time, and some weird little thing that the book triggered in me, whether it was pleasure, or dislike. Sometimes I remember books I disliked, but I couldn’t remember a book I liked, other than the fact that I liked it. Books I listen to on audio (occasionally now, and only non-fiction) I barely remember, I think because I’m usually doing other things while listening.
LikeLike
I think I tend to remember audiobooks better because it’s engaging a different part of my brain with it being sound oriented. The way the narrator reads the book, how fast or slow it is, how long it took me to listen to, and then where I was typically driving, especially if it was someplace repetitive, like I was going back and forth a lot during that time.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I remember a decent amount of detail from books, but I sometimes need a detail or two fed to me to unlock the rest.
I do remember that Vampire Gideon book was a lot of fun. I would have liked more stories with that character.
LikeLike
You have a crazy good memory, and it always surprises me. I’m not sure where that comes from.
Yes, the Vampire Gideon was unique, so that one stands out for just the concept. I know there is a girl living with him and that he works a crisis hotline, but I don’t remember a ton else right now. I do remember reading it to you in our kitchen at Maple Lane.
LikeLike