Do you remember all the books you've read?

[TheHoundsOfHell]

I'm shocked that I can barely remember what happens in books I've read.
Some books have stayed with me but many, I barely remember.
There's a thread on Blood Orange which is a book I've read and enjoyed. I have no idea what the thread is going on about and I can't remember a thing.
How normal is this?

I find with thriller 'the next gone girl!' type books I can never remember - because the writing is never moving and the stories are all very same same. However various books I can remember are usually very well written and have moved me in some way or another.

For example, when I read 'into the darkest corner' it stayed with me very much, its a thriller but is different from all the rest of the 'blood orange' type books because the story was very believable and the writing was great. But I've read hundreds of books under the same category and can't remember much of any of them!

The thriller genre specifically to me can be very unmemorable because the characters aren't exactly deep or well established and the story is so far fetched because the big twist is the main aim, and they all become so predictable. The twist becomes more important than the story itself.

I've read all Sally Rooneys books and those stayed with me as her writing was beautiful and her stories were different to anything i had read before, same for where the crawdids sing or the midnight library Type books - the characters and story line were memorable because they were beautifully written.

Such a relief to read this thread!

Only because I keep a list.

I have a list of every book I've read since about 2007......

No, I don't. I enjoy pacy psychological thrillers but many of them aren't memorable - they're not meant to be really, they're page-turners often using similar plot devices and tropes and the point is that you want to know what happens next, not that you relish the prose or characterisation.

I usually know if I'm going to fall in love with a book and want to read it again and again. With books that aren't like that, I have a potential charity pile and if I don't really remember the book in a few weeks, it goes to the charity shop.

Some stay with me and some utterly vanish! I am rereading "Mapp and Lucia" and while I remembered enjoying it the first time and remember in very broad brush strokes the premise, it's like I'm reading it for the first time - which is great actually!

No. Some I do remember. Others I think are new, then bits begin to sound familiar.

Yes, although I have a number of authors liek.Jill Mansell that I find it very hard to work out from the blurb if I have read that one or not!

Apparently not. As I listened to at least three chapters of a book the other day fhay I had already read. To be fair I get though alot of books.

I am so pleased I am not alone - I can get well into a book before I realise I have read it.

I remember the feel of the book, but often little else. In my 40s I've started rereading books that I've loved before and I often take something completely different from them than I did the first time.

I think there are some that stay with you and some that don't.

I call the ones that don't candyfloss books. Very enjoyable whilst reading but completely gone once it's finished...

I also am an avid re-reader of books. Have some comfort books that I love to read over and over again but for example my book club read Rebecca-most of us not having read since student days and was brilliant to see how differently we all felt about the characters etc.

I can usually remember whether I've read a book or not, and whether I liked it, but can't remember detail of many of them. I read quite a lot though, around a book a week, so that's a lot of books to remember.

I used to use Goodreads but now use Storygraph. I do sometimes have to look a title up on there to check whether I have read it before.

Someone gave me a book to read in 1993 (was abroad and books not that available) - I can still remember it now and how good it was but part of that was having time to give it attention and not having read 'Times bestseller' or other guff about it.
It was Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd. Also possibly as I was abroad at the time it chimed more.
Other books I remember Anne Tyler the girl at the side of the road (or something), Burial Rites Hannah ?Kent, His Bloody Project by Graeme macrae Burnett, Fortnight in September by R C Sheriff, bits of the first few of the Miss Read books (school headmistress in 1950s).
I don't remember all the who killed her - the husband, neighbour, boyfriend, long lost relative ??? 'best sellers' ...

Yes, same here. I can always remember whether I liked them or not but that's all a lot of the time, unless they have totally absorbed me, which is only about 1 in 10.

Yet some I read in childhood have really stuck with me, perhaps I read them over and over as we didn't have access to so many and there was no internet, no on demand TV etc. The Little House on the Prairie books particularly, and the James Herriots. I never liked the original James Herriot TV series, but I have watched the new channel 5 ones and remember SO MUCH from the books despite not having read them for 40 years.

I have this, I think as a child you also can get more absorbed if that makes sense? When I read now I’ve always got half an ear out for the kids or am watching a pot or on my lunch at work and keeping an eye on the time. As a child I could just absolutely absorb myself in another world and so I remembered things from books more as I was concentrating one hundred percent on the book. And as you say I would read and reread to infinity.

Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd
Now that's one I know I read because it was so hyped at the time but I can't remember a thing about it except what the cover looked like!

@TheHoundsOfHell I could have written your post word for word.

I have to Google almost every book I've read as I can't remember for the life of me what's happened in them.

I am quite a quick reader and I do sometimes wonder if I read too quickly for it to actually sink in.

"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

@LizzieB44 wow, 1000+ books in the last decade?! Is it part of your job? Or are you just able to devote a large amount of time to reading? That’s very impressive. I couldn’t do that even if I gave up the internet.

@JaneJeffer maths and chimpanzee behaviour 😊

My dad is 90 and he has a notebook with every book he's read written in it , it's falling apart and he's had to add some extra pages but he's still golloping up books and noting them down . He can also recall what they were about, I wish I had his memory.

I'm the same with most but the odd ones do stick im thinking of Angela's ashes which deeply affected me as one of the saddest things I've read and some of the scenes are painted like pictures in my minds eye and I read it about 10 years ago once.

Also remember the Charles dickens one where the young boy has to go by cart to a new town and had to stand around on the cold playground of a horrible school - can't remember the title though 😂

Mixed - some vividly, some partially, some I remember elements of extremely clearly but can't remember which book I'm thinking of ... other books are eminently forgettable.

It's not necessarily connected to how objectively "good" the book was nor even to whether I enjoyed it exactly (most of the books I remember well were ones I enjoyed, but a few books are memorable for being frustrating/ annoying/ dull but having finished them despite that for some particular reason). I remember some mediocre books vividly because I read them at a time of hightened emotion, and some better books only vaguely because I read a lot of books in quick succession or was exhausted and reading to stay awake!

Nope, still nothing

I work in the IT industry so no, not part of my job :) I've been an avid reader since I was 4 and I carry a book everywhere. I don't watch TV at night, I prefer to read. The downside is that I read very fast so I usually forget the content a while after unless the book really impacted me.