Over on Poe's Deadly Daughters, a lively and informative blog by six female mystery writers, Lonnie Cruse describes a problem that many readers face. She often reads more than one book at a time, and finds it tough to keep the characters and plot twists straight. Lonnie's obviously a lot sharper than I am, because I often have that problem with just one book, especially if I walk away from it for a few days.
Read Streeter Patrick recently emailed me a similar complaint, and posed this suggestion: Why don't long novels carry an index showing where characters have been introduced and referenced. If I were King of Books I would recommend an index for any novel of more than 300 pages, and make it mandatory for family sagas that span generations and countries.