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How does one remember details like this, "I first saw “First Contact” at the Century Gateway multiplex in Tucson, Arizona, on November 30, 1996"? Is this normal? I barely ever know where I am or what day it is. 🧐😭

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Ha! I know there are certain movies that I remember exactly where I saw them, but not the date. Although for things like many of the Star Trek movies, I know I saw them on opening day so it would be pretty easy to say where and when. I think it’s more about the “event” of a new movie in a favorite franchise that cements the memory…

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I only remember seeing movies, and maybe a bit of the people I was with, but no recollection of the name of the theater, or the year even. I remember a couple kissing during "Back to the Future," and I remember waiting in a long line for one of the Star Wars, we sat up really close to "The Matrix," and there were a lot of people at the screening for "Up." I also remember going to the movies with people, but I don't remember the movies we saw. I guess writing things down is probably the best way to remember these things. ;)

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Hey, MW. Joe Fordham responding. Not a normal person :) but since I was a boy, I have kept a 'Films Seen' log – just the date, title, venue, and maybe a note if there was a Q&A with the filmmaker attending – of each movie I have seen. That started as schoolboy diary entries in January 1976 ("Jaws" at the Regent Street Plaza, London), and I missed a bunch before that momentous occasion. I recall "Bambi" was my first ever cinema experience, and it was a disaster – my poor Dad had to carry me screaming from the theatre. I looked it up and that was probably 1967. And I recall "The Towering Inferno" was the first film I saw more than once in a cinema, where I grew up in the UK, so that was likely 1975. I've never attempted to count all the titles, but I'm on Volume Three. It is like time travel for me, flipping through those pages.

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Ah! Thanks for responding! That's amazing that as a schoolboy you started a log—hey, that's like Star Trek's Captain's Log, right Neil?

I only have a sense that I've seen a movie, not the year or location, but my WordPress website is a log of the movies I've watched: https://moviewise.wordpress.com so I understand what you're saying about this history acting as a kind of time travel machine. Anyway, I guess the temptation to keep things in a journal is the reason people become writers.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond!

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I've been keeping a list of every book I finish reading since 1987. I don't list specific dates, just a date range at the top of each page, but I always enjoy adding a new title to the list and occasionally looking back into my reading past.

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Wow! That's interesting. I guess it never occurred to me because I read books from the library, and I have the history and rating are stored there.

So how many books, then, have you read since 1987?

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I have not gone back to count, but there are many pages, with usually a year and a half-ish worth of titles for n each page. Not sure how many per page and total pages - but now you’ve got me curious and I think I’ll do a guesstimate this afternoon…

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