[hildea]

The discussion about the differences in how people feel about characters in books made me curious about other differences in how we experience reading.

When I read, I see in my mind's eye what's happening. It's blurry, like an impressionist painting or like seeing through fogged-up glasses. It's not a film, but a series of still images. It's not something I choose to do or makes an effort to do -- I read about the protagonist waiting on a bleak, cold beach, and there's an image in my mind of what it looks like.

A lot of the time I recycle locations. If I'm reading about a contemporary hotel room it will look mostly the same each time, the flat of Kim Secretan has the same layout as the flat of Bertie Wooster (both are rich bachelors living with a single manservant in London in the 1920s-1930s, but the books they appear in are very different), and the street where the retired orc warrior opens her coffee shop in "Legends and Lattes" looks like the street in Ankh Morpork where the Night Watch has their headquarters.

Do you visualize anything when reading? What about other senses -- do you hear, smell, taste or experience anything else when the words on the page make their way to your brain?