Reddit reviews Sea of Poppies: A Novel (The Ibis Trilogy (1))

I have the same problem and have actually run across the same thing as the author--namely, started reading a book that seems oddly familiar only to get 20-30 pages in and realizing that I know what's going to happen next because I've already read the book. It was kind of unsettling at first but once I accepted that I just don't have the ability to retain the various details of a book that I read 2+ years ago I stopped worrying about it.


But this article was actually interesting and really timely for me for another reason. This week, I just started reading [River of Smoke] (http://www.amazon.com/River-Smoke-Novel-Ibis-Trilogy/dp/1250013755/ref=tmm_pap_title_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369253016&sr=8-1) which is the second installment in what the author, Amitav Ghosh, has termed the Ibis Trilogy. I'd read [Sea of Poppies] (http://www.amazon.com/Sea-Poppies-Amitav-Ghosh/dp/0312428596/ref=pd_sim_b_1) approximately two years ago. Before I sat down to read River I dug at my memory to try and recall as much as I possibly could about Sea of Poppies. I was able to recall a fair number (though not nearly all) of the import characters and their basic stories. I was also able to roughly recall the basic plot and what went on throughout and by the end of the novel but everything seemed kind of hazy and I simply couldn't be sure how much of my recall was accurate and how much was me possibly mixing in subtle details from other similar novels or books read around the same time. (Ideally, I actually would have just pulled my copy of Sea of Poppies off the shelf but I'd recently lent it to my sister and hadn't gotten it back.)


Luckily, Ghosh spends the first 30 pages of River recounting the overall plot and the end of Sea as well as reintroducing various major characters from the first novel (a few of whom I'd forgotten). Amazingly, despite Ghosh's very generally summarizing the first novel, I started to vividly recall various details about many of the characters as well as side plot points that I'd totally forgotten. It was as if just the mere mention of some characters' names as well as a short description of one scene or even a unique location opened the floodgates and my mind started recalling a ton of details and moments from the book that I thought I had entirely forgotten. And as I remembered these details I started to get the same feelings or emotions I'd felt when I first read the book, almost as if I was rereading Sea of Poppies. The wonders of the mind I guess.


All this is just a needlessly long way of saying that maybe we don't forget but just store these great stories away in some deep recesses of our mind that's just waiting to be unlocked.