Do go on:

"There was one book I read not only at the right age, but on the right afternoon, in the right place, at the right angle. I read The Waves on an island, on a plotless day, when I was twenty-two years old, sitting on a terrace from which I could see in the distance the ocean, and the horizon where it met the sky and the changing light that played there as the sun climbed to its zenith and descended again while I thumbed the pages and my blood pressure washed up and down with the words. The Waves is not one of my favorite books. But my memory of reading it is. I was very silly when I was young. I have that to be thankful for."

-Mary Ruefle, from "Someone Reading a Book Is a Sign of Order in the World"

Yes, this is an interesting idea for me: having a favorite memory of reading a book, that might not necessarily be one of our favorite books. So often the experience of reading is tangled inextricably with the content of the text. So, I was trying to think of an experience of a book, which I loved, but the content of said book left something to be desired: Jack Kerouac's Satori in Paris.

Kerouac for me, like many young, red-blooded, hot-headed Americans, had seminal influence over me in my early twenties. On the Road, yes, I will get in this line, changed my life. It is my go-to read when my life is falling apart. It put me together, put me in a context, that of Ginsberg's "Angelheaded hipster searching for the starry dynamo," at exactly the right time, when I could appreciate being there. I love On the Road, and Kerouac, but did not love Satori in Paris, it was a sketch of a novel, one thin and lack-luster: after OTR and Dharma Bums, it falls frail. But the experience reading it was phenomenal because I took it with me to Paris.

I was 22 and "in love with my life" and I will hopefully always remember lying in bed, patio door ajar, sunny afternoon, sweet, unseasonably warm breeze toying with my feet, children running around in the playground below my window, hollering in French, did the air really smell like baguettes, or did I impose that? And I laid there for hours, read the whole book in (almost) one sitting. The book wasn't great, but that afternoon I felt alive in that great electric way we all feel from time to time, when we are in our early 20s or in another country or in love or writing a lot, or well, or well enough.

I showed you mine, now tell me yours: tell me about a time you read a book in which the experience was exhilarating, but the text was not the reason for the excitement: