Remembering What I Had Forgotten

I like reading, but I sometimes find myself lacking in the subject matter that I prefer: mysteries, particularly of the British sort. However, although one of them is not British, I have recently read two mysteries, but gasp! horror of horrors, they were both audio books.

I say it that way, with a gasp!, because I know there are some who would never consider reading a book that way. I get that to some degree, but when I try it I find that I like it.

The first of the two books in question is Louise Penny's most recent Chief Inspector Gamache mystery, Kingdom of the Blind, which set in that wonderful, mythical hamlet of Three Pines in Quebec. The second is Ian Rankin's latest Rebus novel, In a House of Lies, which takes place in Scotland.

I don't want to actually review them here, but I found Kingdom of the Blind very good and In a House of Lies acceptable. Penny's series is unique and well worth reading IMHO. It's good enough to rival the best British mysteries, also IMHO.

Although I have already written the four paragraphs above (come on, they were short!) that really isn't the point of this post. I do understand, however, that there is usually little point to any of my posts. But once again, I am digressing.

What I wanted to get to is memory or lack of same and how a decent sleep might spark it.

I have the Kindle app on my iPad, and sometimes I will see an ad for a  book from an author that I don't yet know that I can nab cheaply (I mean nab the book not the author). Such titles may just sit there, lonely and forlorn, for a time until I get around to them.

So it was that I checked my list last night (which won't actually be last night when you read this) and decided to give Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz a try.

Kindle informed me that I had begun the book at some point in the past, but I decided to start over since I couldn't remember it at the time. The more I read, the more it was familiar to me, and I realized that I had read more of the book than Kindle had recorded. It was getting late, so I shut the device down and went to bed.

When I awoke this morning, I realized that I remembered the whole thing or at least the basic plot outline. In point of fact, I already knew who had dunnit. Just to double check, I scanned a few more chapters which confirmed that I was treading on familiar ground, and really, who wants to read a whodunnit when one already knows whodunnit?*

So that's it: a pretty well pointless post, which reveals that I can be a bit of a forgetful dunce but that a night's sleep can help even the most forgetful of dunces.

PS: Believe it or not, the next book that I opened on my Kindle app was also déjà vu (Yes, Yogi, all over again). I realized that I had also read it or at least much of it although my memory isn't as clear about how it all worked out. So I deleted that too and am currently working through another from the backlist. This one I knew I had begun at one time but only just begun, so I will keep going with it although it's not exactly lighting me up.

*I confess that I might someday want to re-read a whodunnit if the book was really good and was read it a long time ago. For example, I have been considering re-reading some of Elizabeth George's Lynley series, having read the earliest tome three long decades ago.