Anna Paul Week 13; The Memory of Reading

The Memory of Reading

As we start the new quarter with a new blog topic, I wanted to go back to my roots which consist of book topics. With memory, I always find myself thinking back to when I have read certain books like A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder and Shatter Me. 

I also tend to think about the experiences I had when reading these books. I remember in my sophomore year I went to India for two weeks and there were barely any Wifi connections there. It led me to develop a new hobby for reading and I think back to the possible scenarios. What if I didn’t? What would I have possibly made my blogs about? 

What had gotten me into reading was the emotional and overall experiences that the book was providing to me. When I read The Inheritance Games, I remember being so obsessed with the series; it was quite difficult for me to put down the book. I feel like it's because of the characters. 

"Pinterest."
From what Charles Fernyhough had stated about this topic, they state how people tend to grow connections with books due to them placing themselves as those characters that they “could never be” or least likely to become. 

Becoming a character allows people to be able to imagine themselves in those scenarios that the characters are experiencing. Fernyhough claims this as an “imaginary memory” making it somewhat related to the “science of memory.”  Based on their research, our memory from reading goes through a process of encoding new information into our memory and being able to store it in long-term memory. 

I mostly focused on how it relates to reading yet this topic applies to many things like sports, studying, and etc. Though it may have sounded like a psychology lesson, it allows us to be able to understand and save special or important information in our memory for us to be able to retrieve it later when needed. 

Overall, I think that because I encoded and stored special thoughts, feelings, or actions from my book, it makes me remember the good and sad times I have spent reading them.


What Novels Can Tell Us About Memory

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