Re: Mostly likely I'm not thinking through the anecdotal aspect of this..

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JamesJM
Reading your post something glaringly obvious, but I didn't consider, came to mind....

I don't talk about novel/books often... here, rarely away from here... but I'm old so even though it's 'rare' it's been many times.

What I didn't consider is that IF someone does bring up a book most likely it's a novel that they are quite familiar with. So there's that.

But that doesn't explain how... and I don't know how often this is but it happens... I will bring up a novel in a conversation and the person or person's that I'm conversing with will have great knowledge of the book.

But perhaps that even has an obvious answer: I don't, often, discuss books that weren't best sellers, enormously popular.

I remember once bringing up one of my favorite authors on this board... Umberto Eco... here lies an example of not many people knowing him, remembering him, and even if they do remember one of his novels not understanding him well enough to discuss it. (read ME in that last statement). BUT... Zooey, remember him? DID. I was amazed.

So anyway... yeah, you've convinced me, I think... some doubts but overall I think you're probably closer to the truth than I was. - JamesJM

I read Eco's The Name of the Rose probably 25 years ago, and saw the movie, which presents another problem. To be honest, I don't know if I'm remembering the book or the movie when I think about most of it. But I do remember thinking about other books, other writers, especially Jorge Luis Borges, and an artist, Escher, as I read. Eco has also written perhaps the best short definition of fascism, ever, and is pretty solid when it comes to semiotics theory. Haven't read his other novels, like Foucault's Pendulum, though I've read Foucault and a lot about him.

(Zooey's a teacher. Do you know if he was teaching the novel when you guys talked? That, of course, makes a huge difference.)

My own "prime" as a reader probably lasted a coupla decades -- my twenties and thirties -- during which it was rare for me to read fewer than 60 to 80 books a year. And usually difficult books to boot. Mostly classic and avant-garde literature, literary criticism, philosophy, biographies of writers, artists, intellectual movements/schools, etc. Now and then a good thriller to take the edge off. And even during my prime I needed to be close in time to the book in order to do it justice in conversation, though I was good at deducing things from the texts at hand, analyzing them in the moment, reading between the lines, finding hidden insights, making non-obvious connections, etc. etc.

I'm still pretty good at making solid deductions with book in hand, and I'm happy that's still the case. But my days of reading dozens and dozens of books a year . . . I think that's over with. My attention span is too much like the kid on vacation with his parents who just wants to be with his friends back home, cuz his parents are so "lame."

As Mama says, aging isn't for sissies.