Thursday, May 29, 2008

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!

3 comments:

Gregory's said...

Very cool Michele!!! If you like chick books, you have to read Nicholas Sparks. He's great!! I'm reading Judge and Jury by James Patterson right now. Can't put it down. Getting ready to go to it now!! Love this idea!!

Amanda Gregory

Lisa Clarke said...

I am *exactly* the same. I have re-read all of the Agatha Christie and Rex Stout books in my collection because I never remember who did it ;-)

Michele said...

Hi Amanda! I love James Patterson and have read a few of Nicholas Sparks. Both very good!

Lisa - I should re-read books in a series when a new one comes out because I never remember but there are so many other books out there I want to read that I can't bring myself to re-read much of anything. Odd, I know!