Thanks everyone for the replies! Where to start....

seeker, I don't have any audio books, but I think I'd fall asleep and not remember a word! If I'm not actively paying attention, I probably won't have a clue what's being said.

cool09, it's basically for any book, anything that's long and that you have to keep up with. I'll admit, halfway through Payne's post I had to work a little harder (my brain was like: ugh, long, forget it).

gayleggg, when I'm depressed, it's worse. I lose the motivation to read as well. As for medications, one that I was on made me constantly forget what I was saying. Bad times.

Rusty9, sometimes I feel that I'm in over my head, and the reason I can't read or write papers is that I'm not smart enough. But I'm tons interested in psychology, and I can recall the Belmont Report, ganglion cells, the sodium-potassium pump, and William James writing the first psychology textbook (to varying degrees). So I don't think it's a matter of difficulty.

Payne, I've heard of SQ3R. What I've found regarding textbooks is that if I manage to read the text once, I'm set. The problem is reading the text once. I think I'll try it out when classes start up again. As for writing in textbooks... that's something I'm slightly obsessive about. It drives me crazy if a page is bent; what if it had highlighting all over it? The textbooks I have generally have the features you mentioned, though, so I think I'm okay.
And I think I'll try out the memory cues you mentioned. Thanks, and no, you didn't put me to sleep. :P

Last night, I tried reading a relatively easy book I have. I kept reading and rereading sentences till they sunk in, otherwise I had no clue what I'd just read. As usual, I got frustrated and put it aside after I read a few pages, if that.

I've noticed something. If I'm reading a news article or something I expect to forget, I can read it pretty quickly, not reading all the words but getting the idea. I can't do that with a book, a story, something long. I have to read every word, and understand every sentence. And my brain sees how much reading is left (with a book, there's always a lot left), and decides to just give up. I can read pages of short PC posts, but one page of long PC posts and I sometimes give up. I see all the words and my brain shuts down. It's like staying focused for that long is too draining. A short post is a couple words, with a beginning and an end, and I don't need to hold those ideas in my head when reading the next post. But if I approached a long post with the same mindset, I'd forget the beginning by the time I reached the end! (Or so I feel.) From a totally unscientific standpoint, I know my working memory is horrible. If I manage to get it into long-term memory, great. But holding it in working memory is a feat in itself. I can't even remember what I've just said sometimes: I can tell you it was something like so.

Hope what I wrote made sense. I don't tend to go back and reread and edit because I tend to be a perfectionist as well. I wonder if I'd have trouble reading all this? Hm, that's a thought.