Better To Have Read and Forgotten Than Never To Have Read At All

Once upon a time, a girl and her sister set out on a quest to READ AN ENTIRE BOOK SERIES. The task was arduous and irritating, and although meticulously chronicled, the quest was ultimately abandoned. A new quest was undertaken and it proved to be everything the first quest was not: mythical, entertaining, action-packed. That narrative, never written, was lost to history. Until now.

You’ll forgive me if my memory is hazy. I think if you cast your mind back some three-plus years, you’ll find you can’t remember much either. What I know is that over the course of several weeks in early 2021, my sister, Emilie and I, read all three books in the Sea of Trolls series by Nancy Farmer.

What do we remember?

1. We loved it.
2. The books are well-written, incorporating both history and Norse mythology. Emilie had not heard many of the Viking references, and now she realizes how she hears them all the time.
3. Although a perfect series for 5th-grade readers, it was a completely enjoyable read for two, how should I say, older adults.
4. We wanted someone to make an epic movie trilogy out of this series.
5. While reading these books, we became a bit obsessed with Nancy Farmer, who was 80 years old at the time. Social media has made it easy to access authors, and on occasion, we may have contacted a few to say how much we loved their work. Sometimes, they responded (thank you, Amor Towles and Anthony Horowitz!) Nancy has only a Wikipedia page and an old Weebly website so she remains a bit of a mystery. Ultimately, we just wanted to say, Nancy, we think you are awesome.

I’m not surprised I can’t remember the specifics of a book I read three years ago. At work, walking along the aisles and circling the display tables, the books I’ve read jump out at me. I can give a detail, maybe two if I’m lucky, but almost without fail I remember how they made me feel. I know where I was or what I was doing while listening to each one. Like the smell that takes you back to your elementary school cafeteria, they whisk me back in time.

In a piece in The Atlantic by Julie Beck called “Why We Forget Most of the Books We Read“, Faria Sana, an assistant professor of psychology at Athabasca University, in Canada, says memory is about associations, which explains how I can read a book and remember where I was but not what was in it. In 2021, reading The Sea of Trolls trilogy felt like an escape from the social turmoil and the political upheaval. And yet, like my own favorite fairy tales, Rapunzel and Rumpelstiltskin; The Sea of Trolls series is filled will dangers: Berserkers, dragons, slavery, giant spiders. It doesn’t soften the realities of history or the dangers faced by the main characters.

Kids love fairy tales because they can confront and conquer scary things from the safety of their own home, much like women love Dateline. Safe exposure to and knowledge that even the most dangerous foes can be overcome is why reading fairy tales is good for kids. We were facing our own dragons in 2020 and 2021. Whatever means you chose to fight yours, I hope it provided the comfort that reading and sharing a love of books gave me.

What did you find comfort in during 2020 and 2021? Were you a reader, a crocheter, a gardener, a sourdough bread baker? I don’t know if we will ever return to a time that doesn’t feel so fraught with battles, but I appreciate you, and thank you for taking the time to read this.

Before you go…I often have a daytime audiobook and a nighttime one. The daytime book is the one I’m interested in, the nighttime one is a sleep aid chosen to help me sleep (read, boring). During the lockdown, I returned to the comfort one of my favorite books and listened to it every night: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Okay, it’s a postapocalyptic story that starts with a pandemic but trust me, it’s so good.

One more thing…I let WordPress AI create the feature image for this post, and I am horrified and fascinated by it. I’m sorry, Emilie, I think that’s supposed to be us reading together.