What makes some Books, fanfic, writing memorable?

Why is it that I can remember some books regardless of how long ago that I read them or for that matter how much I liked them, vividly. To the point that I could have read them an hour ago. While others, I can barely remember the title let alone what happened? Or I'll remember the plot, the characters vividly, but not the time period in which it was set?

Memory is an odd thing. My Granny can remember what happened during the depression - in meticulous detail, as if she were watching it in front of her eyes, but she cannot remember what she had for lunch or what we just said or if we had Christmas yet.

I'm pondering this as the result of a brief discussion I had with a poster on a review I wrote of Blood & Iron. The discussion was on another book - Perilious Guard, which I can remember the name of, the plot of, the characters, what happens, even the illustrations in the novel, but for the life of me cannot remember the author or what time period it was set in, except that people lived in castles, traveled by horse and carriage, it was in Wales, and there was a King or Queen on the throne. Granted I read it over 20 years ago. But I remember it better than portions of well, Harry Potter. Or for that matter whatever book I was reading last year at this time. Tried to do a list of the books I enjoyed most in 2007 - only to realize I couldn't remember half of them. They'd somehow all blurred together in my memory. I remember snatchs here and there. Atonement - a book I despised - sticks better. I still remember snatchs of it - and no, I have not seen the film. Same with Maria Doria Russell's The Sparrow - can remember that entire book as if I read it yesterday. I remember it better than the last two books I finished.

There are also fanfics I remember well - two. One by wisteria and one by herself_nyc. Both have cars in them. Both dealt with the complicated emotions of two people who cared deeply for one another, yet were at odds. Both are angsty. Can't remember the title of the one by wisteria, just what happens. And I get it confused at times with the one by herself_nyc. The Herself_nyc one was "Whatever She Deserves". I think what intrigued me about both stories was the difficult emotions, the messiness. They both dealt with a vampire who had attempted to rape a woman he loved and how he felt about it after he got a soul, not to mention how she felt about it. The stories were brutal.

And... when I think about it - the books that stick with me and that I have a violent emotional reaction to are much the same as the films and tv shows that stick. They are similar to the types of stories I like to write.

Years ago, a creative writing teacher that I had in college, told me something that I've never forgotten. He said - "You are an interesting writer. You want to explore and investigate the ambiguity of the messy, difficult, and nasty emotions people have and shine a light on them. Figure them out."

He said this after reading several of my stories. They dealt with: 1) a man witnesses an annoying elderly woman, who reminds him of his beloved mother, dying on a plane and struggles with his own desire for his sick and elderly mother's death and his subsequent guilt regarding that desire. The fact that his mother was kind to him and he loves her, makes the desire that much harder to deal with. But she is a problem. And it would be easier if she were gone. And he hates himself for thinking that. 2)a young girl on a road trip with her first boyfriend/first love struggles with the pressure to have sex (when she's hot, sweaty and uncomfortable and hasn't had it before) and the realization that he probably doesn't really love her and they don't work, while she's stuck in the back of a pick-up truck with him on Donner Pass. She's also struggling with her own guilt regarding the relationship. 3)a boy lonely and away from home, at college, estranged from his girlfriend who got into another school, sends notes to inanimate objects in his dorm room and to his sister. 4) a boy and his mentally challenged brother kills the boy's best friend in a gruesome manner after learning of that friend's betrayal.

The two fanfic's that herself_nyc wrote that stuck with me - both explored self-loathing and guilt in a brutal physical manner. One disappointed me - because she appeared to give in to the desire to turn it into a romance, when it was anything but. It was almost as if she gave in to her own fantasy - the worst thing a writer can do in my opinion - but that is only because I fear that I am guilty of it and we often hate that in another's work that we hate in our own. It is admittedly my own failing. The novels I've written, often fall short, because of that tendency. Except for the last one - I did not give in to my fantasies in my most recent novel - which may be why it was the hardest for me to complete. It is easier to write one's fantasies, much harder to write one's reality, methinks.

This is true with published fiction as well - I see it all the time in genre stories, less so in literary ones. Which explains why genre isn't taken as seriously, I suppose. Blood and Iron felt at times as if the writer was giving in to her own fantasies - specifically regarding horses. And Kim Harrison's novels - also felt like that at times (except with vampires not horses). As did Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens - where the writers got carried away with their own cleveriness. Clearly this tendency does not prevent one from being published, let alone read or adored - since many readers do. Perhaps the reader likes the indulgence, the ability to fall into fantasy? Heck, Harry Potter would have been less realistic if everyone survived, but more comforting.

It's not that I don't like those types of stories. I obviously do. The mere fact that I've read so many of them is certainly evidence of it. We all need to escape once and awhile after all. And for me, the best escape hatch has always been through a story regardless of its medium, although books remain my favorite. But, but... I remember better the stories that explore something a bit deeper. Those difficult emotions. Stories that are uncomfortable or are comfortable because the characters in them share and act on difficult/nasty/uncomfortable emotions we ourselves feel. Make mistakes, we would make , because of them. And suffer consequences that we suffer, yet somehow still survive intact like we do. Not dysfunctional family stories - such as the one's Oprah has made famous and unfortunately are all too prevalent, but smaller stories, ones that examine these emotions in people who do not have dysfunctional families per se.

This desire - often places me in a minority when it comes to reading. I found that I was the only one online for example that enjoyed Herself's creation of a squicky, self-loathing Spike in Vietnam, a vampire who had become human and despised himself as well as Buffy. And a Buffy, who did not know how to handle this creature. Or even if she loved it. The ambiguity of the relationship, the squickiness of it. It was uncomfortable. Atonement - a book I hated, at the same time haunts me, because it deals with the difficult emotion of guilt and the attempt to not feel it, to make oneself better, to hide. It is a haunting book because it talks about how one uses fantasy to lie to oneself, to shroud the truth, and the effects of doing it. Great Gatsby also haunts me - because it is about a man who much like the female writer (Briony) in Atonement, attempts to reinvent himself and retell his life through comforting lies with quite different yet similarily tragic results. Neither it seems are entirely able to escape themselves. The best they can do is somehow blur the line between fantasy and reality in their own and others memories. It is also, like Atonement, about class and the impossibility of ever quite fitting in. Both take place during similar time periods, but one is in the US and one is UK.

The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell - is about a priest who has lost all faith in God, and in people, and in himself. Which wouldn't be so startling, if he hadn't started out as a "true believer" or incredibly devout. Devoted. The story is about how he changed and why. It is also about how cultural anthropologists can destroy the culture they are studying with the best of intentions. But most haunting of all - it discusses a cultural practice that we may find horrendous (eating sentinent life forms), but may not be so horrendous in that other culture - since it keeps everything in balance on that world. The book never answers the question - what is morality? And is it right to impose our own sense of morality onto someone else - is that moral?

Each of these books asks what does it mean to be human. How do we handle these emotions? How do we deal with the contradiction of being alone in our bodies yet social animals? How do we handle being self-absorbed and selfish creatures by necessity yet at the same time in denile over it, hating the fact that we are selfish? How do we determine meaning? And how do we determine right from wrong? What makes one person a killer and another a savior? How do we handle our imperfections?

I've always for some reason or other been more interested in reading about the imperfections than the perfections. Perfect characters seem to either bore me or I forget them. I like deeply flawed ones. The character of Spike intrigued me for all the reasons other's appeared to despise him. I found him a mass of contradictions. Yet, I'm inconsistent. I found I could not tolerate the character of Briony in Atonement. And I wonder if perhaps her villainy hit too close to home? While Spike's felt like discovering an unknown orgasism? I don't know.

I don't know. Time to go to bed. I've rambled here long enough.