This week’s musing asks…

Do you ever find scenes from previous books you’ve read popping into your head at random times? If so, does it bother you? If it doesn’t happen to you, why do you think that is?

This is a strange question to me because I assumed this happened to everyone. Do you mean it doesn’t? Are there people who don’t have scenes from novels popping into their heads at random times? Really? Huh. In answer to this question, I share two quotes from two sage writers:

“I am a part of all that I have met.”—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses.” To me, this line means everything we experience forms who we are, and that includes what we read.

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.”—Ernest Hemingway

So, if Tennyson and Hemingway are right (and I think they are), then how could one not have scenes popping into one’s head? It is like calling forth memories, or if it’s not, then someone needs to explain it to me because I don’t get it.

Does it bother me? Absolutely not. Book memories are by and large the most pleasant ones, so they are welcome to pop in my head whenever they like. Except Stephen King’s It. Those memories can stay away. Especially that psychotic clown.