[lqet]

Katarina Janoskova, linked in the article, writes:

> Is [reading] just a waste of time? Well, no, I don’t think so. Every book makes a mark. Even if it doesn’t stay in your conscious memory. Just as every single thing that happens to you does and every person you meet.

I once read a short essay by Patrick Süskind (author of "Perfume - The Story of a Murderer"). I am paraphrasing, but in it, he discusses his embarrassment that he cannot remember even major plot details or character names of great works of world literature, although he has read them multiple times and they deeply inspired his own work. He then makes an interesting speculation: if a book really and deeply influences you, then maybe actively remembering facts and insights of the book becomes harder and harder, because the book's ideas have been so deeply ingrained into your brain and thinking that you cannot remember them as facts independent of your own thinking. But this doesn't mean that you have "forgotten" them.

[Gooblebrai]

I never cease to be surprised with the attempts to make everything productive nowadays. Of course, everyone can do whatever they want but it seems to me a symptom of how society works nowadays that instead of just enjoying the act of reading and remembering whatever details impact us, we obsess with being able to retrieve information from them

[jbstack]

This assumes that the main purpose of reading is always enjoyment. Often that is not the case; we read because we require the knowledge contained in the book for our work. The converse of only engaging with a book on an emotional level and retaining only those details which are interesting is forgetting those parts which were difficult/boring but useful.

[GamerAlias]

Do you happen to have a link to said essay or know the name as I can't find it and would be interested in reading it. I also gladly confess to not remembering the plot of the vast majority of the works of fiction that I've read.

[lqet]

Here is the German original:

http://www.buecherlei.de/fab/autor/rs/suesk.htm