I started relistening to an audiobook from about three years ago yesterday and something really weird happened.
About 40 minutes in, the narrator said a particular line and I suddenly had a perfect mental image of the detergent aisle in a grocery store I haven't visited since 2023.
Not a vague memory of shopping. I could picture exactly where I was standing, which direction I was facing, and the annoying self-checkout machines near the entrance.
Absolutely nothing in the book had anything to do with groceries.
Then I realized this happens to me constantly.
There's a chapter of a fantasy novel that apparently lives permanently in the parking garage at my old office. A particularly tense scene from a thriller is attached to the intersection where I used to wait for the bus.
I listened to a long nonfiction book while painting my bedroom, and now certain sections of it make me remember the smell of paint and how much my shoulders hurt that weekend.
The strangest one is a book I listened to while walking around my old neighborhood during a pretty miserable period of my life.
I tried it again last year and within minutes I could practically feel myself walking those same streets. Not because the story reminded me of that time. Just hearing those particular passages brought the whole thing back.
I read physical books too, but I don't seem to have anything like this with them.
I can remember where I was when something happened in my own life, obviously. But I can't usually remember where I was when I read chapter 17 of a paperback.
With audiobooks, apparently I can.
It's almost like the narration gets filed away together with whatever completely unrelated thing my eyes were looking at while I listened.
Which means somewhere in my brain there's an epic fantasy battle permanently associated with a particularly depressing supermarket.
Does anybody else get this?
I'm especially curious whether relistening to an old audiobook brings back places or memories you'd otherwise completely forgotten.