Since I am not going anywhere over break and Reese is still in school this week I have had a chance to have some down time and have been able to read more than usual.  I have several books that are on deck to be read and my aunt, sister and I are always passing along books and recommending books so I am never without reading material.

Yesterday as I cracked open my (what I hoped was) new book, I, like always, had to laugh at myself as I remember what I used to think was funny (and is even more funny now that I am laughing at myself).

A few years ago my aunt, sister and I were together at a family party and swapping books and my aunt made a, what I found to be very funny, comment about how she sometimes starts reading a book and it is not until she is half way through that she realizes that she already read the book.  Now I know sometimes people reread the same book that they love over and over but this was not the case.  She really thought she was reading a brand new book!

My sister then chimed in that that had happened to her as well.

Now I just found this unbelievable.  How can you not remember you read a book, especially once you are pretty deep into it!  I know they read much more than I do but come on.

Needless to say from that day on every time I shared a book I would tease them about their poor memory about the books they read.

That is until it happened to me..

Now my defense (weak as it is, it is still my defense) is that I look at books all the time when I pass them at Target or wherever I may be shopping.  I find myself drawn to the same titles and know a lot of titles and what they are basically about  although I have never read a lot of them.  And then vice versa..  I know about a lot of books but sometimes can’t remember if I read the book and that’s why I know about it or if I just read the back of the book 10 times at Target and that’s why it sounds familiar.  And throw in a popular author that I like then it makes things even trickier.

I think what even made it worse was that my friend had the book that she originally got from me.  When I showed interest in it she told me that I already read it and gave it to her.  I disagreed and she kept insisting.  She said we even talked about it and how we didn’t like the ending  So I decided that I must have given it to her without reading it and she must have mistaken our chat with someone else.  Certainly I would remember.

So I read and I read and I read and then all of a sudden things started to sound familiar and like a light switch the whole story came back to me and I had done what I teased others for doing.

So from now on I make no mention of reading forgetfulness to anyone and I reread the back of books and even flip through pages to make sure I have not read it first, especially when I buy a new book.