Book memory

"What was the name of the last Kinsey Millhone book?"
"Did I read the latest Lisa Gardner book? It came out last year."
And at book club - "When she talked about the mess in her office..." Me - "Uh, what mess?"

I have a TERRIBLE book memory. I don't know if it's related to my regular memory which isn't very good either. But I am horrible at remembering even the main plots of books. Or even if I've read the book at all! I read alot of books and would say that what I do read is not really many different genres. I tend to stay with the mystery/suspense and 'chick lit'-ish (technical literary term there! LOL).

If it's a series of books, I can definitely tell you about the main characters and their lives. It's almost like they become a friend of mine. I can even tell you about some of their adventures, but definitely not everything. If you asked about a specific book in the series, I could not even remotely tell you what happened, even if it's the last one I've read. Singleton books - nope! I generally can tell you my long term impression of the book but nothing else usually pops into mind.

In fact, I could not tell you many details from even the last book I've read. This seems so odd to me. I feel like I should be able to talk about that. Is this memory issue normal? I tend to think not but who knows. For the record, if someone is talking about the book to me, I can usually recall what they are discussing (so, yes, I can talk at book club!).

For 2007, I was just keeping track of the books I'd read and the basic rating (out of 5 stars) on Library Thing, not really commenting. So I could look and see if I'd read a book but not really recall much about it. At the beginning of this year, I saw that a friend puts comments on her books so I started doing that. Made a big difference in helping me recall the book. Course, now with this blog, I hopefully will remember even more about the books. Or really, I still won't remember. But I can just look here and wow myself with my recall!