I enjoy reading, but I've always struggled with it, particularly with larger, slower-paced, and more complex books (though it's never stopped me). I suspect I have pretty strong aphantasia [1] and so I never build mental images of the characters or their scenes, rather I only remember abstract descriptors about everything. I find that this makes it hard for me to follow storylines and in particular multiple story arcs in multiple different locations or timeframes. I think that this does impact the level of joy I get from reading, and envy those who get a rich tapestry of mental images from the stories.
I found, for example, Matthew Reilly's Ice Station a relatively easy story when I read it as a teen because the pace was high and the action was contained to a relatively simple scene. On the other hand, I'm reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver right now and I'm really struggling to follow the story arcs because it jumps all over the place with its characters, scenes and timeframes. The fact I'm already familiar with most of the characters' names helps some of it stick, but I'm resigned to most of the secondary Royal Society characters being a generic conglomeration of traits and just treat them as a supporting cast without defined personalities in a lot of ways.
I find that I also very quickly forget the contents of novels I read. I read Snow Crash about 5-8 years ago and then again earlier this year, and I barely remembered any of it. Certainly I think more stuck the second time, but it was still mostly new to me (e.g. the character concepts and biggest plot points kind of stuck, but nothing more).
I sort of hope that reading can help me improve with my memory, but it hasn't in about 25 years of reading (I'm in my early 30s) so I don't hold particularly high hopes. I do wonder whether the aphantasia would've been even worse had I not read so much when growing up, but maybe if it hasn't noticeably improved in my life then equivalently it would never have been any worse had I not read. I wonder if my brain in some ways reflects an illiterate person in the visual cortex areas?
On the other hand, reading is undoubtedly the reason my vocabulary and spelling is as good as it is. Certainly, it's is a very valuable skill and I am glad that I continued to engage it since I learned to read as a child.
That's interesting about aphantasia. I knew some people have incredible visualization ability far past the normal amount, but I never knew that some people have none at all.
I think my visualization ability is about average, although I do very well with visual thinking. Not sure what the correlation is there.
I've been a prolific reader since about 11 years old. I would say that in general, I don't try to visualize what the author writes. Whenever the author spends a lot of time going into setting up the environment with lots of visual details, I only lightly skim that. I don't bother trying to visualize exactly what the author is trying to convey.
So sometimes it does lead to a little bit of confusion later on in the story if something I read doesn't match up with my made up visualization, but generally I might only get a blip of confusion a few times during a book, it doesn't really amount to much or affect my enjoyment.
I'm not sure how much time Neal Stephenson spends on visual details in Snow Crash, but I remember the first 200 pages of Anathem being a chore to get through because of the incredible amount of time he spent on setting up the environment. Because I largely skipped the visual details in Anathem, there were parts later on in the story that were confusing due to the fact I didn't have a grasp on the layout of the monastery and such. Assuming he didn't make mistakes at any point.
I catch myself skimming over details like that too, because they are essentially meaningless to me. That said, I've never had the situtaion of a mental image being wrong, because I never end up actually drawing one. I just end up getting lost, like I'm constantly encountering new scenes that haven't been described to me. It's disorienting but now I've come to adapt to it, I know that I'll not necessarily follow details I would otherwise expect myself to follow, not because it's badly written (as I used to sometimes wonder) but that it just doesn't gel in my mind. So I've come to adapt to that, in a ways.
Nice point about the light skimming of largely irrelevant details; I do that too and also suffer some mild but acceptable confusion later in a work...
It also depends how engaged a book has me. Sometimes books are about the story and those details don’t matter. Other times they are more like paintings and time spent engrossed in smaller details does reveal a deeper level of enjoyment to the reader.
Huh. TIL. I wonder if that applies to me too, though maybe in more of a sliding scale way. At best I can almost kinda maybe visualize things in very small flashes, but it's basically never what I'd consider visual / auditory / etc. I just kinda "know" what I'm thinking of, and that's the end of it.
I'm like that too, I think. I would hesitate to call it "seeing" things. Something like counting sheep actually causing a visual experience (in color!) just does not compute.
It's frustrating, because I've been wanting to learn how to draw, and now it seems like there should be something in my mind that I could try to put on paper? Would certainly make things easier
If I close my eyes, all I experience is blackness. Is that not true for most people?
I don't think I'm completely incapable of using this superpower; I can recall two instances where I've experienced an actual vivid in-colour visual hallucination while sleeping. Both times completely blew my mind but I woke up so they didn't last, I can't figure out how to trigger them again. :/
Drawing is something I'm absolutely awful at. I was talking to some friends about it a month ago. They draw very well and they very much picture a mental image, then essentially translate that. They can conjure up images out of their minds, hold them there and draw each detail.
Meanwhile, if I'm not literally line-tracing, I'm woeful at it (like, stick-figure level bad). I can't even directly look at something and translate it, though that may be due to my general lack of practice.
Regarding dreaming, I know I've dreamt maybe 3 times a year? When I'm in very light sleep and drifting in and out of it. Within seconds of waking up, I've lost it however, so I never remember my dreams, just knowing that I did in fact have dreams happening. For the other 360 days, I'm essentailly closing my eyes to a void and then teleporting to the next morning.
fwiw I've done fine as an art minor, and one of the first things you learn is to stop doing things by memory, and do it by vision :) I'm not sure it's really necessary.
Well, yeah, I'm aware of that, but it still boggles the mind that there'd be something visual in people's memory to actually reference while drawing, other than things like "there's supposed to be muscle here and some bones there, and gravity will affect the hair". ie. facts about structure. I don't know, perhaps I could put together a drawing just by assembling such facts and trying to figure out what to put on paper to represent them.
It's really hard to describe how I feel about it. I can't know how other people perceive the world, so I might be misunderstanding the whole thing, but for the longest time I though "imagination" was metaphorical, but lately I've been wondering that it might not be.
As I said in my earlier comment, I do get these feelings that might be "seeing" something inside my head sometimes, but the feeling is so indistinct that I can't call it constructing images in my mind; I've been trying to figure out how to make my brain do it better, but it's difficult.
I found, for example, Matthew Reilly's Ice Station a relatively easy story when I read it as a teen because the pace was high and the action was contained to a relatively simple scene. On the other hand, I'm reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver right now and I'm really struggling to follow the story arcs because it jumps all over the place with its characters, scenes and timeframes. The fact I'm already familiar with most of the characters' names helps some of it stick, but I'm resigned to most of the secondary Royal Society characters being a generic conglomeration of traits and just treat them as a supporting cast without defined personalities in a lot of ways.
I find that I also very quickly forget the contents of novels I read. I read Snow Crash about 5-8 years ago and then again earlier this year, and I barely remembered any of it. Certainly I think more stuck the second time, but it was still mostly new to me (e.g. the character concepts and biggest plot points kind of stuck, but nothing more).
I sort of hope that reading can help me improve with my memory, but it hasn't in about 25 years of reading (I'm in my early 30s) so I don't hold particularly high hopes. I do wonder whether the aphantasia would've been even worse had I not read so much when growing up, but maybe if it hasn't noticeably improved in my life then equivalently it would never have been any worse had I not read. I wonder if my brain in some ways reflects an illiterate person in the visual cortex areas?
On the other hand, reading is undoubtedly the reason my vocabulary and spelling is as good as it is. Certainly, it's is a very valuable skill and I am glad that I continued to engage it since I learned to read as a child.
[1]: https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-...