You Don’t Have to Remember the Plot

A few months ago, my husband and I were at a dinner, and we were talking about our favorite books.

One of our dinner companions excitedly announced his favorite book, Titus Groan. When I mentioned I hadn’t read it, he replied, “Oh, it’s great!” He tried to recount the plot, and then stopped. “Let me show you,” he said. He pulled up ChatGPT on his phone and asked it for a summary of the book before handing me the phone.

While I commend the enthusiasm, it reminded me that we sometimes get too hung up on plot. Why do I care what ChatGPT’s summary of the plot is? I want to know why this person liked this book. I don’t care if he remembers if Steerpike worked in the kitchens or the stables. I don’t care if he gets some details completely wrong!

This made me reflect: how do I relate to books, and does how much I remember their details affect my impression of the book and of myself as a reader?

There are some lucky people out there who can tell you all of the details of a book they read twenty years ago. I am not one of those people, and it used to make me wonder: Do I not care enough about the book? Do I have a terrible memory? Am I stupid?

But then I realized that it’s not the plot that matters. It’s how the plot and the characters and the writing and whatever magic the author sprinkled in there made you feel. 

If you ask me about some of my close friendships, I cannot quote my friends from ten years ago. But I can tell you how they make me feel. This friend makes me feel seen. This is a friend I can go to with any complaint or frustration. This friend understands my potential, my ambition.

So it’s the same, really, with books. I don’t need to remember every conversation I’ve had with a friend to know what that friendship means to me. And I don’t need to remember every plot point of a book to know what it meant to me either. Did the book make me feel seen? Is it a book I had fun reading? Did it change the way I thought about something? That’s what really matters, I think.