n Amazon and tried something new. I certainly don't regret it. This collection, dealing with the theme of memory, remembrance, and the past, is one of the best books I have read this year. I have not read anything by Doerr previously, but will probably search out his earlier works based on this book. A few of the stories have a futuristic element, but not such a far stretch as to consider them pure science fiction. All are grounded in very real people struggling with the juxtaposition of their memories and the future. Of the six stories in the book, "Memory Wall", "Procreate, Generate", "The River Nemunas" and "Afterworld" were all memorable.An interesting thought from "Memory Wall": "Memory builds itself without any clean or objective logic: a dot here, another dot here, and plenty of dark spaces in between. What we know is always evolving, always subdividing. Remember a memory often enough and you can create a new memory, the memory of remembering." [p. 71]
An evocative passage from "Procreate, Generate": "Outside the wind is flying down from the mountains, and there haven't been headlights on the road all night, and all Imogene can hear is the whirring of the dishwasher, and her husband's low sobbing, and the hot wind tearing through the sage." [p. 103]
And a passage that summarizes many of the central themes of the book, from "Afterworld": "Every hour, Robert thinks, all over the globe, an infinite number of memories disappear, whole glowing atlases dragged into graves. But during the same hour children are moving about, surveying territory that seems to them entirely new. They push back the darkness; they scatter memories behind them like bread crumbs. The world is remade." [p. 242]
4.5 stars out of 5.
Books read this year: 17 [totalling 3,670 pages]
New authors: 11 [including this]
Published in 2010: 9 [including this]
Classics: still 3
What to read next? Probably Robin Black's If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This.
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