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Cleaned out the attic last week.
Oct. 17th, 2006 10:58 pm
Not me, though I did help a bit - Michelle and my mom.
We have a lot of books. Five or six or seven or more garbage bags were filled with unsalvageable books (due to various animals living up there and gnawing on them or worse), and that's nothing compared to the boxes filled up and hauled down, nor even the books that were downstairs from the start. (And don't get me started on the boxes upon boxes of books we donated to various schools from preschool up on through the eighth grade!)
We had two or three (or more) copies of several of these books (but not, by any means, most of these books) simply because as we lost one copy, we just went out and bought another. Why not? And as we're moving the tons (ton, anyway, and I don't consider that to be much of an exaggeration) of books, I happened to glance at a few of them that had fallen open. And most of the time, if I'd ever read that book more than, say, once (and I read almost all books more than once, eventually), I could recognize it on the basis of a few words. Half a sentence, tops.
It gets better. I see the cover of a book. I pause for a second, then I immediately recall the general gist of the story, three specific scenes, the year I bought it (I was twelve), and the fact that I've only read it two or three times because it wasn't a great book anyway. In fact, I'd forgotten all about it until I saw it.
...
All I can say is, if this is what I'm spending my memory on, it's no wonder I'm so bad at recalling names, faces, and my approximate location in space.
I'm talking literally thousands of books I've read in my lifetime (well, some of them were pretty short), and though the sample I spontaneously remembered whole plotlines of wasn't nearly large enough to qualify as a representitive sample - that's a nifty little parlor trick I've got going on here.
We have a lot of books. Five or six or seven or more garbage bags were filled with unsalvageable books (due to various animals living up there and gnawing on them or worse), and that's nothing compared to the boxes filled up and hauled down, nor even the books that were downstairs from the start. (And don't get me started on the boxes upon boxes of books we donated to various schools from preschool up on through the eighth grade!)
We had two or three (or more) copies of several of these books (but not, by any means, most of these books) simply because as we lost one copy, we just went out and bought another. Why not? And as we're moving the tons (ton, anyway, and I don't consider that to be much of an exaggeration) of books, I happened to glance at a few of them that had fallen open. And most of the time, if I'd ever read that book more than, say, once (and I read almost all books more than once, eventually), I could recognize it on the basis of a few words. Half a sentence, tops.
It gets better. I see the cover of a book. I pause for a second, then I immediately recall the general gist of the story, three specific scenes, the year I bought it (I was twelve), and the fact that I've only read it two or three times because it wasn't a great book anyway. In fact, I'd forgotten all about it until I saw it.
...
All I can say is, if this is what I'm spending my memory on, it's no wonder I'm so bad at recalling names, faces, and my approximate location in space.
I'm talking literally thousands of books I've read in my lifetime (well, some of them were pretty short), and though the sample I spontaneously remembered whole plotlines of wasn't nearly large enough to qualify as a representitive sample - that's a nifty little parlor trick I've got going on here.
