hah I had the same problem, finally about two years ago I decided it was time to ween myself off the book. A guy in my area has a small school which is largely

hah I had the same problem, finally about two years ago I decided it was time to ween myself off the book. A guy in my area has a small school which is largely focused on getting players off-book with the top couple hundred standards. It's definitely a slow process at first, but what I think is remarkable is how (even setting aside the blues or rhythm changes tunes) how much faster memorizing new tunes goes once you've done 50 or 60. I think that I had assumed, perhaps partly because of the existence of the book, that while memorizing pop or rock songs is relatively easy, permanently memorizing standards with a lot of changes was not a realistic thing, but now I know that its really more that the problem space is just larger for standards, and its just a matter of exploring that space for a while that you get familiar enough that you can listen and guess your way through tunes you're shaky on. Now, the book seems like more trouble than its worth on gigs because it takes a lot of my limited cycles to stare at it. But boy did it take a while to get to that point!