A few months back, The New York Times asked Leigh Bardugo what books got her into fantasy as a genre. She named a handful of books, adding,”I think any time you can remember where you were when you read a book for the first time (Dune—tiny motel room on a miserable family trip, A Swiftly Tilting Planet on the white shag carpet in my grandparents’ back room) that means something.”
And it does, doesn’t it? Over the months I’ve been writing this column, I’ve mentioned more than one book about which I remember the specifics of my first reading experience: trying not to audibly cry on a Greyhound bus as I finished Where the Red Fern Grows; reading Lavinia on a train, the sound of wheels on tracks locking in with Le Guin’s prose; wading through Wanderers on a (pre-pandemic) plane, increasingly creeped out by the people too close to me.
Would I remember these books the same way if I had read them elsewhere? What alchemy makes these memories so clear? What is it that makes some stories coalesce so clearly in our minds, like postcards you can flip back through?
I don’t think there’s any science to this—no equation a person can math out. Like a nickname, you can’t force it. There are things that will help me remember where I read something; I remember many of the books I read in the backyard of my beloved, now-closed favorite Brooklyn bar in part simply because I liked to post pictures of them on Instagram, the bright orange tables making a vivid contrast with just about any cover. But I made that happen. It’s a different kind of remembering—intentional, not the kind that sneaks up on you and stays.
If a book can find you at the right time, it can find you at the right place, too. I used to think it was bad luck that I read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in a million tiny sections while traveling and living in a hostel, but now I think that the very unsettledness, the way I only remember scenes, not the whole book—it fits together with the book itself. I don’t remember anything I read on so many other trips—there were books in my bag, surely. There always are. But the titles escape me.
When you scan your bookshelves, what do you remember? The way Microserfs sunk into our language in college. The moment when I suddenly understood Bascule’s accent in Feersum Endjinn. Sometimes it’s words, sometimes it’s places. I spent the first anniversary of 9/11 sprawled on a blanket in the sun on my mother’s deck, reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and very determinedly staying the hell off the internet. I don’t remember anything about the book, but I remember the sun, and the feeling like if I moved, I would have to start holding my breath.
The “how” of reading can mean a lot of things, from format to location to speed to mood. Under the covers with a flashlight? While being shuttled between parents’ houses? On the train, in the bath, before bed? Books ask to be read differently, feel different when we read them differently, resonate at different tones when read aloud or to ourselves. Heraclitus said that you never step in the same river twice. You probably never read the same book twice, either.
In a dream world, maybe every reading experience would be memorable for its own reasons—we would be reading in the sun, reading under the trees, reading in beautiful, relaxing spaces that let us focus so deeply on the stories that everything else falls away. Reality is less picturesque: reading on a commute, over breakfast, in a lunch hour that feels stolen even though you’ve earned it. Reading outside the restaurant when you’re the first person to arrive and you don’t want to go in alone. Reading at the bar while you try to ignore the loud people behind you.
Though all of these things are perfect, in their own way, sometimes.
There is another kind of reading experience I’ve been thinking about, lately, and it’s this: the unfollowable books. Every so often, I read something for which it feels like there is no cure. There is nothing else that lives in the same headspace the book creates. No other book sings the same clear, pure note. You may find something that works in harmony, or you may just throw up your hands and let your next selection clash with the things the unfollowable book has done to your head.
Buy the Book
The Saint of Bright Doors
Has this happened to you? When I read Piranesi I felt like the massive rooms and spaces of Susanna Clarke’s novel were forming in the synapses of my brain. Afterward, nothing fit there right; everything rattled and shook loose, and I wandered around in a daze, picking books up and putting them down. I have never been able to explain quite why I sobbed at the end of Jordy Rosenberg’s Confessions of the Fox, but there was a kind of hope in those last pages that made me feel shaken and reset in some invisible yet fundamental way. I am still nervous about rereading Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber because it, too, did something in my brain, some transformational magic, that I am desperate to find once more and also afraid I will never see again.
Profound, ineffable, unmatched: the experience of hearing A Wizard of Earthsea for the first time; of trying to read Catherynne Valente’s Palimpsest only while in motion; of trying to envision the worlds of Rin Chupeco’s The Bone Witch or Lynne Berstrand’s City of the Uncommon Thief. It can happen with nonfiction, too: The way I slowed my reading down, trying to go methodically, unhurriedly through Claire Dederer’s Monsters, or Elissa Washuta’s White Magic.
You can’t force a book to be the one that changes your worldview, your ideas about story, your sense of scale or scope; you can look for these things, of course, seek them out as best we can, though it can be hard to find out what a book is really, really about until you’re deep in it. You can try to match books with moments, looking for those picture-perfect times when the book and the place lock in, a photo in your mind that you never lose or forget. But so much of this—of the memorable and perfect and infuriating moments found in pages—is just the simple magic of being a reader. It’s obvious, and yet: it’s hard to just let things happen, sometimes. Stay curious, stay sharp, stay ready. The next book you read might be one you never forget.
Molly Templeton lives and writes in Oregon, and spends as much time as possible in the woods. Sometimes she talks about books on Twitter.
Huh. The only clear memory I have of place connected with a specific book, was where I was when I finished The Return of the King (the ugly authorized Ballantine paperback). Perhaps the memory is clear because I was so distressed that the end of the story was not the end of the book. At that time I had no interest whatsoever in the Appendices. I felt cheated that the story ended 2/3 of the way through the book.
I have very few book and moment pairs, but I treasure every single one of them I have.
@Moderator, is the title of this post supposed to be “place and tome” (as posted), or it supposed to be “place and time”?
@3 – Not the moderator, but yes, the title says what I wanted it to!
Stapledon’s “Star Maker”, at age 15, during a 150 mph windstorm with gusts up to 200. This was in 1971.
Stranded, for years it turned out, in a desolate craphole in the Aleutians, the horrendous isolation and bad family situation, ADHD and a bad school being worse than any storm.
My swift-growing interest in astronomy, including radio emissions from planets, might have been one of the things that kept me going. In light of the resources to help me, I ordered books from the Dover company, via a catalog I had found. Stapledon blew my mind, to say the least. Yes, I still have the book.
So many great place and tomes for me! There’s reading the Red Wedding scene in the back of the car on the way home from a trip. Reading Skeleton Crew stretched out on my bed on a 100-plus degree summer day. Missing my bus stop because I was immersed in an Agatha Christie (By the Pricking of My Thumbs). Reading Ngaio Marsh novels while indulging in bubble baths. Working my way through Helter Skelter during a 105 degree stretch as I took tickets at the swimming pool in my little non-air conditioned ticket office. The list is endless. The memories hit me in all the right places.
So many…
My parents did long driving trips to the US’s southwest for vacation when I was growing up. My dad and I were both avid readers and would hit up any bookstores we could find. I kept a set of notecards with names and addresses and I remember many books that I first read on those long car trips. This was late 70s and early 80s–Rissa Kerguelen by F.M. Busby, Zenna Henderson’s collections which were set in the same landscapes I was visiting, A. Bertram Chandler’s John Grimes stories. When I was in Wales on a year abroad, I remember reading Tepper’s Mavin Many-Shaped trilogy, a bunch of Heinlein and Dumarest and Lensmen and the Chanur series which luckily had had Chanur’s Homecoming published the year before and McKinley’s The Blue Sword. I also found two novels, Last of the Wine and The Persian Boy, by Mary Renault in my residence hall’s small library.
I also have extremely clear memories of browsing a bookstore in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport in 1989 on my way to New Orleans for a short trip. I gasped in surprise to see Sharon Lee’s and Steve Miller’s Carpe Diem (sequel to Agent of Change) on the shelf. I feel sorry for my seatmate as I was chortling and practically drooling over the book on the flight.
I put off reading the Goblin Emperor because the people who recommended it to me didn’t manage to convince me it was right for me. Then after a long and difficult day at work (hospital admin) during Covid a comment on this site made me download the ebook. I was up all night! But I went to work totally refreshed. Just the right book for that moment. I shall never forget that.
Oh gosh I could list so many instances of moments in life books stayed with me, good or bad. The two most significant were as a child. Reading the LOTR trilogy on the beach, in the awful hot sun where my parents made me ‘hang out’ with the family. I hated the sun then, and today have a confirmed UV allergy. No wonder I stuck to my umbrella like a life-line! While my beach towel had sand stuck to it (and me) and was trapped between the pages of my 1980’s gold runes paperback copies, I was transported to Middle-Earth. Instead of remembering the rashes from the sun; that whole summer is memorable for being inside Tolkien’s world and loving every moment. I was 11 years old.
Second is, an author I shudder to mention these days, George R. R. Martin. I had just caught up on Robert Jordan’s WOT, I was 16 and it was 1997. At the bookstore I saw a gorgeous paperback with a picture of Jon Snow on horseback in his winter cloak; it was a frigidly cold Calgary, Canada winter that year, and I liked how warm he looked. The cover also had an endorsement from Jordon prominently displayed. I bought that book so excited to find something with female lead characters (and children!) in the ‘high’ fantasy section (which in those days was a teeny tiny corner of the bookstore). When I first read of Ned’s demise I took that beautiful book I had bought and threw it against the wall of my tiny bedroom. I was sooo upset. My father came into my room all confused about his crazy teenager crying and having ‘hurt’ a book (my books are my babies even today, it pains me to damage them). What a moment that was for me to realize that the best literature is as chaotic as real life; things you expect to never happen can and will transpire. Lets face it, where would the insanity of any world be without surprise moments both good and bad?
Lastly (as I could go on forever) I read Sara Douglass series The Wayfarer Redemption where we go from the first 3 books being about strong characters surviving and transition into the back half of the series into demonic rule. I read book 5, ‘Pilgrim’ while I was in college. It’s massively depressing, leaves (nearly) zero hope for our mere mortals and overall is a real downer. I’ve never read it since; but I remember it specifically as it was what I was reading when 9/11 happened. That series has always stuck with me as being a perfect match to the helpless I felt both in our world and in Douglass’ demonic controlled one. At one point during COVID I joked with a friend that a perfect cocktail for a suicide would be that book and the reiteration of COVID restrictions in the background at an airport. *nervous laughte
Please know suicide is no joke at all and if you need help it is critical to reach out for help!
What a great article this is and it took me on a little trip through these, and other, memories in my life. Thank you for that!
Pretty much I get so engrossed in a book that it could be anywhere. I do remember buying the first 2 of the Discworld series and where I read them (on holidays in Caloundra, Australia) staying with my inlaws. But only because I was so taken with them that I then went back to the same bookstore and bought whatever else he had at the time (probably another 5 Discworld items, plus a couple of his SF things). My wife quickly devoured them after me, and we have pretty much everything he wrote as soon as it came out in paperback.
It wasn’t SFF really (I don’t know what it is) but I have the brightest, best memory of reading, of all things, Beckett’s Molloy on a bench on the Cheers-ward side of the Public Gardens in Boston around the turn of the century, giggling at the rocks’n’pockets episode and wondering why people told me this stuff was so dour.
Reading aloud with someone does this for me as well – The Spouse & I have read things like LOTR, several (particularly the witchier) Discworlds, and a lot of Wodehouse together and those seem to stick in the brain more than the things read alone.