There are books on shelves that have been relocated six times between six apartments. The margins are thick with pencil marks that made perfect sense at age 24 but now read slightly differently, and the spines are soft from repeated opening. The majority of readers have at least one of these: a book that has withstood every culling, was too worn to be donated and too significant to be thrown away, and holds a permanent place in the house similar to a picture of a particular person. Not because it’s the greatest book ever written. due to something more difficult to describe than quality.
For years, researchers in cognitive and behavioral psychology have been perplexed by the difference between books that stick around and those that don’t. The results consistently show that people rarely keep the books they find most intellectually stimulating. They are the ones who showed up at the appropriate time. During a truly lonely moment, read a book about loneliness. A tale of bravery experienced at the exact moment when bravery seemed most elusive. The timing of the encounter seems to matter more than the content, which explains why the same book given to two different people can seem essential to one and forgettable to the other, and why the same reader returning to a book at forty finds something in it that was just not there at twenty-two.
From a neurological perspective, this seems to be a form of emotional imprinting, where the brain labels an experience as important based on the reader’s emotional state at the time rather than the experience’s objective qualities. State-dependent memory is the term used by psychologists to describe this phenomenon: information that is absorbed during a time of intense emotion is encoded more deeply and retrieved more easily than information that is absorbed during a neutral state. A book that a reader reads while grieving, on the verge of making a big decision, or during the unique confusion of early adulthood is stored differently in their memory than a book they read on a relaxed weekend with nothing to lose. The emotional context and the content blend together. The book later contains both.
Because of this, some passages seem to locate readers with an accuracy that is almost unsettling. I’ve been feeling this way all along: that recognition goes beyond simple literary appreciation. It’s the experience of reading a sentence and thinking. It is something more comprehensible, less common than it seems, and causes a reaction in the brain that scientists have connected to the same neural pathways that are triggered by real social interaction. Books that offer this kind of acknowledgment during a vulnerable time are not merely read. It is remembered with emotional accuracy and a loyalty unrelated to the book’s critical standing, just like important human interactions are remembered.
Characters appear to follow a similar logic. Seldom are the most admirable or dramatically portrayed fictional characters the ones that stick with readers the longest. They are the ones in whom readers have seen a reflection of themselves, one that is honest rather than necessarily flattering. The reason Jane Eyre survives is not because she is unique, but rather because many readers have experienced being undervalued and wanting to be truly seen rather than controlled. Pride and the need to be fully understood are not historical emotions, which is why Elizabeth Bennet stays. Paradoxically, a well-drawn character’s specificity turns into a kind of universality; the more accurately a character is portrayed, the more opportunities readers have to identify with them.
Here, the urge to reread is worth considering since it provides insight into the true purpose of these books. Readers go back to their favorite books not so much to relive the story—they already know what happens—but rather to re-enter a certain emotional state that the book consistently evokes. People turn to well-known stories during stressful times in the same way that they turn to other forms of solace: not for novelty, but for the particular sense of security that comes from predictability. The well-known narrative turns into a controlled setting where the stakes are fake but the feelings it evokes are genuine. There’s a real benefit to that. The brain is able to experience full-blown emotions regardless of the result.
A collaboration between the text and the reader’s life at a particular time is ultimately what transforms a book into a personal treasure; this collaboration cannot be planned, marketed, or duplicated. On the correct Tuesday, a book that has been unread on a hundred shelves becomes indispensable to the hundred-first person who opens it. It’s possible that the books that most of us consider to be the most significant aren’t the best we’ve ever read, but rather the ones that just so happened to be in our possession when we most needed something to cling to. From the outside, this timing is invisible, but from the inside, it is totally irreversible. A book ceases to be a book and transforms into something else once it has encountered a reader in that manner. Something was retained.
Alyssa Bennett as editor at vclib.org, oversees editorial coverage of literary criticism, cultural analysis, political commentary. Alyssa brings rigorous research discipline, in-depth knowledge, experience, and an approachable editorial voice to subjects that most readers find thought-provoking and culturally significant. Her career spans the intersection of literary journalism, political writing, and educational publishing.