What are your "Magic Slate" movies/TV shows/books?

For those who aren’t familiar, Magic Slates are those toys that have been around at least since the '50s- you write on a piece of gray cellophane over a waxy background, then raise the celophane and- voila!- it’s blank again due to a magic only the ancients understood. Picture.

An embarrassing number of TV shows and books and movies are like Magic Slates to me: I like them well enough when I’m reading them or watching them, but once finished the cellophane comes up and between most and all of the plot is gone forever from my mind. Most “beach reading” is like this, including most (not all) Grisham, but even some things that I really like are in this category. Foremost may be Doctor Who: I like the show a lot, but I might remember one in seven episodes with David Tennant and only slightly more with Matt Smith (the more being because I haven’t had as long to forget them) and if it’s an episode that has a callback to something that happened 12 episodes ago then it might as well be in the Jon Pertwee years (which I’ve never seen) because I probably won’t have a clue. (“Let’s see, I remember three episodes from around then- the one with Oods, the one with Daleks, and the one with neither Oods nor Daleks”.)

Ditto Star Trek episodes (TNG or later), pretty much all action films, and almost all sitcoms save for Community class or above: most are never saved to the hard drive.

What are your Magic Slate entertainments?

I’ll agree on Grisham. Dean Koontz is in that category for me, and most of Vonnegut as well.
I’m sure there are tons of others, but I’ve pulled that piece of cellophane and their gone right now…

For me it doesn’t get any more perfect for your OP than Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books. I’m almost positive I’ve read them all - I couldn’t tell you for sure, b/c even when I’m holding one in my hand I can’t figure out if I’ve already read that one. I don’t mean just the title, although that’s no help, I mean I can’t even tell based on the plot description. It doesn’t get more “fast food” than that.

I watched the Jack Reacher movie the other night, and although I recognized the sniper plot from one of the books, I still had no idea what was going to happen, who the bad guys were, etc. If it were a better movie I guess that would’ve been a good thing.

I’m 57, so …most of them. :slight_smile:

Especially mysteries, thrillers and languid sun dappled literature where not much happens: Agatha Christie, Barbara Pym, Daniel Silva, P.D. James, Charles Todd, Henry James, E.M. Forster, Edith Wharton.

I really do like all of these authors and enjoyed reading their books, but I couldn’t outline the plot of any them with a gun to my Kindle.

Very little. If I don’t remember what happened in a show, movie or book, it was either ages ago or I didn’t care for it. If I actively enjoyed it, it sticks around.

Those Lucas Davenport books by John Sanford.

Most of the stories I read for lit classes, especially in high school, were Magic Slated once the assignment was written.

Actually most of them, I think. People try to discuss TV and movies with me all the time and unless I’ve just watched them, I’m all “Duh”

Not sure what it is for me, because I heartily adore my TV and movies. It’s possible the reason is that I just watch too damn much media and I can’t retain it all, so I retain none.

It’s actually a pretty awkward existence. It makes me seem like I’m full of shit when I claim to have watched anything.

Pretty much most of them. I seem to either forget I ever read or watched something completely, or I have a pretty good amount of the data on file. Now, I’ll forget titles and/or authors, but I’ll remember the plot.

There’s a novel on my shelves that I reread perhaps every two years, and I am always amazed that I cannot, for the life of me, remember how it comes out. (I have an exceptional memory for written material, near-“photographic” in many cases, so this is very unusual.) I can’t remember even the name of the book right now; I’d have to up to the second floor and look through the bookcases to find it.

In my days of reading Clive Cussler (I’m cured! I’m cured!) I found that I couldn’t retain any but the gist of the plot very long, and ended up unintentionaly re-reading several of them. I still can’t find one I am sure was a CC, but I’ve given up the re-reads trying to find it.

I’m currently reading a book of interviews with Shelby Foote in which something that surprised me about him, considering that he lived in an antique filled home and wrote his million+ word Civil War trilogy entirely with a fountain pen and inkwell, is that he was an avid TV watcher when he wasn’t writing. He said he watched it specifically to be entertained by something that he’d quickly forget, and I understand that view. I have almost ridiculously perfect recall of any '70s sitcom I watched, but in more recent decades the TV is more background noise because (odd perhaps for a librarian) I hate silence. (Almost a phobia: I have no fear of the dark but I can’t stand a totally quiet room if I’m alone- neurotic residue of growing up in a haunted house perhaps ;).)

I have read the book “Horn Crown” literally 4 times, and I’m pretty sure that the protagonist is a man. I’ve stopped trying to reread it and have anything stick.

Probably not what you’re looking for, I keep forgetting I’ve seen the end of Spoony’s Final Fantasy X-2 review. And I don’t mean that it’s forgettable. I just mean that I keep thinking he didn’t finish it. I just watched it again and only after I saw it again did I realize I’d seen all of it.

For closer to what you are looking for: I marathoned the first couple of seasons of Charmed and completely forgot most episodes.

Competitive reality shows. During the run of the show, I have a decent idea of who the participants are, who I think might win, etc. As soon as the final episode airs, and a winner is declared, the entire season is wiped from my memory bank. Try to ask me about someone who competed in a previous season, and I not only won’t know how they finished, I won’t even know what show they competed on.

When Ben Affleck’s [Gone Baby Gone](Dennis Lehane) came out, I couldn’t wait to see it. I was intrigued that Affleck was directing and wished him well. I always liked him even if he’d had some rough times. The movie starred Casey Affleck and I liked him a lot too. I purposely stayed away from any kind of plot synopsis, reviews or trailers because I didn’t want to be spoiled. I had no idea what the story was. I was nervously excited when I went to see it on opening night.

It was not only as good as I had hoped, it was much much better than I could have hoped. I was sucked into the story from the beginning. As the movie went on I kept anticipating what would happen next and I was often correct, but I didn’t take this as the movie being predictable in any way, it’s just that what would happen seemed right, that it was supposed to be that way.

At some point past the halfway mark, I started thinking of an upcoming scene, where they would be in a rock quarry. That was silly, of course, since I’d never seen the movie before. It was opening night, and I hadn’t seen a sneak preview. I disregarded my thoughts and went back to watching the movie.

The scene at the rock quarry came, indeed, and my mind boggled a little bit. How could I have known that a scene would take place at a rock quarry?!? It was kinda freaky, but that was the only scene that I anticipated. The rest seemed familiar but in a “good movies are like that” way, not a “I’ve seen this before” way.

When I got home that night I went into the bathroom and moved something that was covering up a stack of books (doesn’t everybody have a hundred books in their bathroom?). There, in the stack, near the top too, was Dennis Lehane’s novel, Gone Baby Gone. And I’d read it within the past few months too, and not knowing that a movie was coming either. To this day I have no idea why it was a Magic Slate for me. I enjoyed it, though I enjoyed the movie much more.

Magic Slate, that’s so perfect as an analogy. I loved those things!

As I get older I find more and more shows (and books and movies and games and pretty much anything entertainment) like that. I don’t know if it’s just a function of an aging brain, or if it’s a brain that’s become so full up of trivial matters that new things entering have started pushing old things out.

Whenever I read manga on my computer, I pretty much forget what I read. It’s like I need to be reading it on paper to absorb what’s going on.

I’m currently trying to figure out if I have the same thing with ebooks, but the thing is, I don’t know if I remember my paper books better because they’re on paper or because I’ve been reading them longer so I’ve had more time to obsessively go over passages.