The Pandemic of Book Amnesia

Most of the people reading this post are book bloggers or at least very dedicated readers. The type of people that read daily. We devour books like they're food and we're never satisfied. Occasionally we grow impatient with one type of flavour, but upon seeing a really epic trailer for an upcoming book, we get right back into it. We read so much, so fast, and sometimes it takes a toll on our lives. We're those strange people that sometimes would rather just curl up with a nice book instead of going shopping. It's weird to friends who don't read, and we've been told so many times that we read too much.

Another toll it's taken on me is my memory. Now, I'm not blaming books on what I would call "absentmindedness" (or what my mom calls "idiocy"). Rather, where do you think all those thousands, maybe even millions, of words go? They can't all stay in my brain. So some go away. Most people remember general storylines for books they read. They remember character names, backgrounds, covers, anything. Everyone has this issue to some degree, but I feel like I suffer more than others. 

I have book amnesia. Also known as liber amnesia.

It's rather shameful and embarrassing. I have been ridiculed for it. Mostly by this one really mean Vampire Academy/ Sidney Crosby fan, but it still hurts. All jokes aside, I find it really weird and so do others. You might be wondering why, so I'll tell you some of the symptoms of my condition. 

Symptoms

• forgetting character's names. 
• forgetting the story.
• forgetting the title. 
• forgetting what happens
• forgetting I ever read the book.
• forgetting if I liked it or not. 

Now, it's pretty obvious why I write a review for a book almost immediately after reading it. The thing about these "symptoms" is that they aren't exactly bad. Everyone forgets stories and books sometimes. The thing that's a little extreme is how fast I can forget. I've read a book, and a day later can't remember the main character's love interest's name. I've read a book I adored so much that I made my friend buy it and then she reads it within a week of me. We try to talk about the ending but I can't remember it all. It's tragic because you can imagine how much I can remember once I read a sequel of a book I year later. That's right, not much. 

Solutions

I'm a fighter. I refuse to let this conundrum bring me down. I will read books, and damnit I will remember some of them! Mostly, it's my very favourite series that I remember the most, but even that doesn't work sometimes. So rather than lament about the problem, I seek solutions. 

One solution I found was reading Down The Rabbit Hole's Happily Ever Endings posts. I love these. No seriously, they have saved me so many times. Basically, they are the summaries of endings for books and they, along with some spoilery Goodreads reviews, rescue me from reading a sequel of a book I have no recollection of. Especially since in general I don't like to reread. So they have helped me a lot.

What I'm wondering is if this is common among book readers or am I an anomaly. Do you guys suffer from any type of liber amnesia too? Let us commiserate in the comments!