The oldest one is recommending the book he’s just finished to me.
“You should read this,” he says, handing me a well-thumbed paperback, which I turn over in my hands.
“Blue,” I say.
“The cover’s blue, yeah,” he says. “It’s a translation, and not much happens, but it’s good.”
“OK,” I say. “I’m already reading a book, but I will take this on holiday with me.”
“Now I need a new book,” he says. “Any ideas?”
This has never happened before. I’ve recommended many books to my sons over the years, but to my knowledge they have never read any of them. My wife also never reads the books I recommend, even though I always read the ones she recommends to me. Actual publishers sometimes ask me to provide blurbs for books, but at home my advice in these matters is both unsolicited and ignored. Until now.
“Hmm,” I say, tapping my chin. “Let me think.”
“I’m about to go out, so …”
“The book I’m reading right now isn’t that good,” I say, “And the book I read before that was actually recommended to me by you.”
“Death Comes for the Archbishop,” he says. “A banger.”
“That’s not what I would write if I was asked to provide a blurb for a future edition,” I say. “But yes, it was good.”
“My train goes in 12 minutes,” he says.
“Wait here,” I say.
I go to the living room and, with uncharacteristic luck, immediately locate a particular hardback.
“Try this,” I say. “I read it when it came out. It’s like a period thing.”
“Which period?” he says.
“What am I, a historian?” I say. “Olden times.”
“Huh,” he says, examining the cover.
“Like a period thing, but funny, and good,” I say.
He pulls his Kindle from his bag, taps in the title and hands the book back to me.
“I’ll give it a go,” he says, heading for the front door.
This feels like an important moment: the start of an era in which my counsel is both sought and heeded. I go in search of the middle one, thinking I might recommend Death Comes for the Archbishop to him, but he’s not home.
Fifteen minutes later I receive a cryptic text from the oldest one. I read it over twice, but it makes no sense. Eventually it dawns on me that it must be a quotation from the book I recommended to him, an example of the olden times language employed.
I pick up the book from the kitchen table and begin reading. After a few minutes I find the exact words from the text message, on page eight. But by then my mouth is hanging open in horror.
“I remembered not one thing about it,” I tell my wife later. “Not one character, not one name, nothing.”
“I never remember much about books I’ve read,” she says.
“It’s not just that,” I say. “There was stuff I did remember about the first chapter that is absolutely not in there, that must be from a different book.”
“It happens,” she says.
“I’m going around recommending books to people,” I say. “Books I may as well not have read.”
“You’re old,” my wife says. “Get over it.”
But I can’t get over it. In bed that night I lie awake, staring at the spines of the books on my nightstand, trying to remember a single salient fact about any of them. I imagine a blurb on the back of a paperback that says, “Like a period thing, but funny, and good.” The cumulative knowledge, understanding and wisdom of all the books I have ever read has ceased to exist, I think, or at any rate does not abide in me.
I open the not-that-good book I am currently reading – which I have nearly finished – and think: what’s the point?
Four days later I am at the airport, sitting on a plastic chair near the Pret with my wife and three other couples. It is the shoulder season, when old people go on holiday together. Everyone at the airport is our age.
Soon we discuss books: books we have read, or are reading, or might read, or might recommend.
“It’s about this archbishop who dies, eventually,” I say. “Not much happens before that, but it’s good.”
Fortunately no one is listening to me. Someone else mentions a title that strikes a faint chime in the hazy recesses of my brain.
“Is that the blue one?” I say.
“The cover is blue, yes,” she says.
“Ah,” I say, reaching into my bag. “I am also reading the blue one.”
• Join Tim Dowling at a special Guardian Live event on Wednesday 26 November. The evening of Guardian culture will be hosted by Nish Kumar and include Georgina Lawton, who will host a live You be the judge, and Meera Sodha. Live in London or via livestream, book tickets here
