It’s freebie week! I’ve been talking a lot lately how I’ve read so many books that I can’t remember all of them. This post is inspired by the first book on my list, which I cannot remember AT ALL even though I gave it four stars on Goodreads. I mean, even reading the synopsis did nothing to jog my memory. So I wondered how many other books I would find in my Goodreads that I had rated pretty highly (with four or five stars) but could not remember reading.

The answer? Seventeen. (Obviously, there are probably some books I rated with three or fewer stars that I don’t remember, but that seems normal. But to really like a book–or even love it–and not remember it? Bookworm problems, I swear.)

Anyway, here are ten books I rated with four or five stars that I do not remember reading at all. Like…at all. Okay, maybe I remember seeing the covers before but that’s it. I have also included the synopsis from Goodreads. Clicking on the picture will take you to the book’s Goodreads page.

1. Clotel, or the President’s Daughter by William Wells Brown: First published in December 1853, Clotel was written amid then unconfirmed rumors that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with one of his slaves. The story begins with the auction of his mistress, here called Currer, and their two daughters, Clotel and Althesa. The Virginian who buys Clotel falls in love with her, gets her pregnant, seems to promise marriage—then sells her. Escaping from the slave dealer, Clotel returns to Virginia disguised as a white man in order to rescue her daughter, Mary, a slave in her father’s house. A fast-paced and harrowing tale of slavery and freedom, of the hypocrisies of a nation founded on democratic principles, Clotel is more than a sensationalist novel. It is a founding text of the African American novelistic tradition, a brilliantly composed and richly detailed exploration of human relations in a new world in which race is a cultural construct.

My note: Pretty sure I read this in grad school.

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