YES!! Years later you may not remember the acute details of your reads, but you’ll remember the feelings they provoked. I can’t tell you all the plot points of my high school books, but I can still vividly “feel” the lessons of Native Son, The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, Faulkner, Hemingway, Morrison, Angelou and so on. The extra work we did when we read those books — the quizzes, reports, and mostly the discussions — embedded them.

And now when I read and write I can summon their majesty as easily as pulling socks from the top drawer.