It was announced this week that Salman Rushdie’s book Midnight’s Children has (again) won the Best of the Booker (this time for the 40th anniversary of the prize). I looked at the shortlist a while back – for some reason, just six previous Booker winners were nominated to be potential Best of the Bookers, which seems a bit unfair – but in any case, I couldn’t decide that any of them were better than the others, and didn’t vote.

But apparently 36% of the voters decided on Midnight’s Children, a pretty high proportion. The frustrating thing for me is that I know I’ve read this book, and have a very, very vague impression of it still left in my brain, but if I had to describe anything about it to anyone, I’d be utterly lost. Basically I’d just say “it’s about India”, a dismal summary if I ever heard one.

The thing is, there are hundreds of books that I can’t remember much about at all, even though at the time I found them absolutely fascinating. This problem is dramatically increased if I read a book within a day or two, so for that reason I limit my reading of books that I’m loving, so that they’ll stick better in my brain. But still, come back a few months later and there are so many cases where I could look at the cover of a book, know my opinion about it, but can’t tell you anything about the characters or plot. I find this rather distressing, I have to say, and hate to think that people will do the same to my books in the future!

Am I the only one out there who has this weird kind of book amnesia?