Ever read the same book 2x w/o remembering it?

Have you ever read the same book a few years later and not remembered that you read it before? I just did it with Koontz’s “Whispers” of which I must have read 10 years ago or so and just re-read it last week. The only reason that I know is because I remembered the very last couple of chapters, I remembered nothing else.

So fess up who else has a book more than once? Actaully I suprised that this is the first time it’s happened to me. I’m just glad the book was good. I didn’t even know I had read the book until I figured out the ending and remembered one small part.

As much of my reading over the years has been genre fiction, this happens to me fairly often. I sit there asking, “Have I read this before?” through the whole book, sometimes not coming to a definite conclusion.

You think that’s bad? Asimov once wrote the same book twice without realizing it. Well, OK, short story. “Day of the Hunters”, and I don’t remember what the other was called offhand.

On several occasions, I’ve bought the same book twice, but I usually realize it within the first few chapters. Most recently, I bought another copy David Weber’s The Armageddon Inheritance, after mistaking it for it’s own sequel.

Several years back, I bought a copy of S. J. Gould’s Dinosaur in a Haystack, in hardcover. A couple years later, I saw it for sale as a Book of the Month Club selection (in softcover), thought it looked neat, and bought it. As I was reading it, I got this weird sense of deja vu. I Checked my bookshelf, and sure enough, there was the first copy.

Not exactly, but sort of. Let me explain. Jurassic Park- I read it when I was in sixth grade, and then reread it this summer. I mean, I remember reading it for the first time, but I have no recollection of about 99% of the material. A lot of the stuff felt like I was rediscovering the book for the first time. Trippy, no?

Yeah, I remember not remembering a single word from book I read twice. Introduction to Organic Chemistry, I think it was…

There’s been a couple of times I’ve read stuff translated by different people and not realized it was the same book. It happens more frequently when they transliterate the character’s names differently or change them altogether.

I don’t do this as much any more … but it used to happen all the time. The only thing I can say is that at least I enjoyed many books two times, and often enjoyed the suspense as well. Sometimes I don’t think all the wiring in my brain was put in quite right.

More often than not, I remember I have read the book before, but I don’t remember how it ends, so I am thoroughly surprised to come to the conclusion. I would give some examples, but they are so mortifying, and besides, Ike might take away my ability to post in this forum.

Depends on what you mean by “without remembering it.” If you mean read it and then realized I’ve read it before, then no.

But how about this experience similar to Zoggie’s, but with a much shorter time lapse? When I was a junior or senior in high school I read Willa Cather’s My Antonia on a teacher’s recommendation. Four or five years later (senior year of college) it was assigned in one of my lit classes. The only memory I retained of the book was “A boy talks about some girl he knew a long time ago.” That’s it. I didn’t have the normal feeling of “oh, I’ve read this before, and x comes next” even once. I was actually surprised that he didn’t end up marrying her when he grew up. I find it hard to believe that the book was so thoughly erased from my memory in such a short time…

As dropzone put it, sometimes you just can’t tell whether you’ve read the story before or not. It’s tough to tell a good case of deja-vu from an actual memory.

It imagine it makes it difficult to write. Can you ever be sure that the plot you think you came up with is really and truly your original plot? I know I’ve written short stories only to realize that they had the same plot as something I’d read a year earlier.

But the coup-de-gras has to be the time way back in high school, I read “A Tail of Two Cities”. The assignment was to read so many books a year as part of our requirements. Gawd, the first several chapters were boring. So, my brain pretty much went numb as I read the rest of it. Eventually, I did a report and handed it in, only to have the teacher look at my records and note that I read the same book and did a report on it last year. You can imagine how difficult it was to try to convince a doubtful literature teacher that it was actually an honest mistake…

And then do the same thing again the following semester with “The Prince and The Pauper”.

Yes, and the sad thing is, I’m at risk for reading it a 3rd time because I still can’t recall the name of it.

My coworker keeps a database of all her books. She’s had to go back and check a few times, before she was sure whether she’d read one or not.

I have to admit that when I read Robert Ludlum books I can’t tell if I’m reading a new one or one I’ve already read. I swear they’re all the same book. And what’s even more pathetic, even though it’s the same damn book each time, there’s always something I don’t get about the double-crossing and triple-crossing and so forth.

I really ought to stick to Dr. Seuss and Lavyrle Spencer.

I reread 1984 last week. I’d read most of it about five years ago, but never finished it.

I didn’t remember a thing. There was a vague sense of “yeah, I think I remember this” in a few spots, but otherwise, I might’ve just looked at the description on the back for all I remembered.

I do that a lot. I remember that I really liked the story, but I don’t remember the actual plot.
jessica

Ahhh, the Ludlum syndrome. My sister has said that she’ll read to the end of one of his books and totally forgot how the book opens.

During my 7-months away from the family during the Long Move, I bought a copy of Mark Twain’s essays from the Library of America. When we got back together and unpacked my library, there it was: the first copy I bought years ago. Damn that hurt!

“Left Hand of Darkness” I knew I had read it, but when I reread it for a college course, nothing of it stuck in my mind. It was perhaps too subtle for me the first time around.

I just did this this weekend. It was Jeffrey Archer’s The 11th Commandment. Got all the way through it, to the last 2 chapters until I realized that I had read it two years ago. I remembered how it ended, but absolutely nothing up to that point. Unfortunately, despite the main character having nearly my exact same name and having gone to the same college as me, I couldn’t remember reading it!

I don’t recommend this book.

I enjoy reading tremendously, and do it constantly, but several years after I finish a book, all I can ever remember are the bare bones of the storyline. I usually remember which characters die and which ones get married, and that’s about it. The good news is that I save a fortune on books…if I don’t have a new one handy, I can re-read an old one that I enjoyed before, and still be surprised by the plot twists.

The bad news is, I’m not even old yet and my memory already sucks.