[jeeva]

I feel like there's a distinction between _learning something_ from reading a book and remembering plot details.

I am awful at remembering names and characters from books. I'm all good while I'm reading them, but if you asked me "What did you think of John's situation in $BookX" I would find it hard to answer. That said, it all goes into the gestalt jumble of ideas that is me.

I'll say that I mostly read comparitively low-effort fiction that people rarely "test me" on, so it possibly matters less.

[pdimitar]

Ah, but I am not talking about memorizing stuff, I am really talking about things like "Hey, I forgot what was the backstory of the villain of the book #2 in series X, what was he about?" and then the person proceeded to award me with an empty stare, followed by a hostile one.

[watwut]

If that backstory was not interesting to that person it is likely they will forget immediately after reading. I mean, your own premise is that you forgot too, the stare is hostile because they know the exercise is dishonest.

[pdimitar]

Nope, it was a very nice positive meet of 8-9 people and I had no goals or agendas, I simply asked because it was long time ago for me. The person projected very hard and I realized I struck a nerve post factum. It was a classic case of being misinterpreted due to the other person's own insecurities.