Why are Books Memorable?

This one, of course, came from my RockStories writing blog and landed to my post explaining why I couldn't answer the question, "What the best book you've ever read?" I'm not sure whether the question is about why we generally remember books or what makes a particular book memorable, but I'm partial to the second interpretation--so partial that I've been looking forward to answering this question since I first noticed it in my search results more than a week ago.

Before I do, though, I have to say that the answer is undoubtedly different for everyone. I've been bored to tears by books that I know have a lot of objective merit (Tolkein, anyone?) and know that some very discerning readers just can't see what keeps me going back to re-read The Sun Also Rises every couple of years. Reasonable opinions may vary.

For me, though, the thing that makes a book significant is that it brings something to my attention that I hadn't thought about before. Usually that's not a revolutionary change, a kind of "Wow, I've been looking at this all wrong!" kind of epiphany, but a matter of being consciously confronted with something that is obviously true once it's been placed before us, but that we hadn't ever acknowledged before--or perhaps consciously noticed at all.

Recently, for instance, I was reading Jon Hassler's North of Hope, and I ran across a passage in which the housekeeper in a rectory suggests that an aging priest has lost his mind because he claims to have seen an angel. "Don't you believe in angels?" another priest asks her. She says that she does, but that believing in them and seeing them are two different things, and that's what sets Christians apart from lunatics.

When I read that passage, I laughed out loud, as I often do when surprised by obvious truth. Isn't that the common view, though it's not always spoken aloud (or perhaps even understood in so many words)? Isn't the world full of people who believe in angels, but would never in a million years believe that you'd seen one? And did you ever really think about the fact that they were the same people, until you read these words? I didn't, until I read Hassler's words.

The great thing is that these revelations can come from anywhere, be found in any kind of book, and don't require great literary prowess or National Book Awards. And once we've tripped over one, our thinking never quite snaps back to exactly where it was before. That, I think, is what makes a book memorable--one's just reading along, carefree as can be, and BOOM: for the rest of your life you know something, or see something, that you didn't know or see before.

My old dog won't eat; is she dying?

This isn't mine. I stole this search term from a friend, whose blog is largely focused on parenting and knitting (Google--could we have a word about your discernment process?) As she so aptly pointed out, a dog who doesn't eat WILL die, even if the loss of appetite wasn't a symptom of impending death. Thus, it's not something to be ignored.

She also pointed out that when her old dog wouldn't eat, the vet suggested that she change up her diet a bit, and lo and behold--home cooked meals did the trick. But loss of appetite can also indicate serious medical issues, and your vet is really the best source of information about this.

That said, I want to add a word about searching the Internet. Even if the Internet was the best source of this information, this search string was doomed to fail. Remember, Google returns search results in large part based on a match-up of the words you typed into the search box with the words on the page it returns (excluding "stop words" like "the"). It's common for people searching for information on the web to type in questions like the one above, but it's generally not very effective: if you were writing a veterinary information site, would you write "my old dog won't eat, is she dying?" on the page? Probably not--unless you were a savvy search engine marketer.

Thus, the question above turns up a knitting / parenting blog where the author has talked a bit about her concerns about her old dog, while a search for: dog symptoms loss of appetite turns up pages of veterinary information about various medical conditions that can cause dogs to lose their appetites, warning signs, and what you should do. In short, when you're looking for information on the Internet, don't type in the question you want answered--type in the key words you'd expect to find in the answer, or that you'd put in a heading if you were writing the answer.

Is it better to be Catholic or get a divorce?

I'm not sure that I understand this question, because they're not mutually exclusive. The Bible says that anyone who divorces and remarries commits adultery, and so one can't be a fully practicing Catholic if one has divorced and remarried without receiving a declaration of nullity from the church. But the simple act of getting a divorce, while discouraged, isn't a bar to practicing Catholism--to oversimplify a bit, it's simply disregarded. A civil divorce doesn't impact your obligations based on the vows you took before God, so in the eyes of the church, you're still married.

If I Died, Who Would Care?

My first inclination was to say that no one could hope to find the answer to this question through a search engine, because the answer was unique and personal for every one of us. But even as I set out to write that, I realized that it wasn't entirely true; I think that the fundamental answer is the same for each and every one of us.

Here it is: You'd be surprised.

It's pretty easy, in day-to-day life, to take the people around us for granted. It's also easy to give the impression of taking them for granted even when we don't, or to assume that people know the small differences they make in our lives even when we don't mention them--or that they have plenty of other, closer people to affirm them and don't really need to hear from us. It might even be a little intrusive.

But all those people who aren't saying anything for whatever myriad reasons make sense are still there. Friends you haven't talked to in months, or maybe even years, but who know you're out there and value that even if time and life carry them in different directions; the customer who comes into your store three days a week and counts on the extra moment or two you take to chat with her because she's alone most of the time; the person yet unmet whose life you might change entirely.

Someone. That's the answer. It might be someone you overlook, someone you never thought of, someone you've forgotten, someone you don't yet know well. But if you died, it would change someone's life, and not for the better.

What's the Side Affects [sic] of Putting the Condom on Wrong and Still Having Sex?

Pregnancy.

Oh, and STDs. Possibly AIDS.

Or maybe none of those things. It's a gamble, just like unprotected sex.

10 Year Old Boy Keeps Having Headaches, What's Wrong?

I don't know.

Neither does Google.

Take this child to the doctor, please.

Can You Rape a Prostitute?

Yes, but you shouldn't.

This is a reasonable question in the view of the fact that a judge in Pennsylvania recently ruled that raping (oops, sorry, forcing a prostitute to perform sex acts at gunpoint) was mere theft of services. Armed robbery, if you will.

In truth, what's the argument? That prostitutes regularly consent to sex, so they're deemed ALWAYS to have consented, in all circumstances?

That's a pretty slippery slope, don't you think?