Bookworms: How Do You Read So Many Books?

[darryl]

The movie of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest won awards. Jack Nicholson, who portrayed McMurphy, won awards for his performance. But I read the book first and could never see him as McMurphy. I'm sure I would have enjoyed the movie much more had I not read the book first. I love the book but wonder how my reading of it would have been different had I seen the movie first.

On the other hand, in the book The Girl with all the Gifts Melanie is described as blonde and very light skinned, but in the movie she is portrayed by a dark-skinned young actress, yet this did not jar me at all. I think the difference for me is that physical characteristics were an essential part of McMurphy and very much intertwined with his character. I simply could not see Nicholson, as great an actor as he was, as a big, red-headed Irish Brawler and Conman running a wheel at a carnival, for instance. Nicholson's whole demeanor to me was not consistent with this character. On the other hand Melanie's skin colour did not make a difference to me in this role. There are of course many characters where skin colour is very important.

I've never given much thought to visualisation whilst reading. I think we all probably visualise to some extent. To the extent that I do so it is very much background and low key. It is certainly not like a movie in my head, though if a scene is described well I must visualise it to some extent. For instance, I'm thinking now of a descriptive scene from one book, and I do have a vision in my head of what the particular room looks like, though I don't consciously recall experiencing this vision whilst reading. For me I think a lot of the visualisation is subconscious, whilst to some of us it seems to be very vivid indeed.

[Catlady]

So ... for those who are seeing movies in their heads, how do you experience a nonfiction book of ideas, whether it's self-help or sociology or philosophy?

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by Catlady

So ... for those who are seeing movies in their heads, how do you experience a nonfiction book of ideas, whether it's self-help or sociology or philosophy?

Depends on the concepts and how abstract they are, as well as the writing style of the author. I don't read nearly as much non-fiction as I do fiction, but when I do, I am often able to visualize during a good bit of the text, though it may take a different form (a lecturer in front of a whiteboard, or something like a series of slides, for example). If I'm reading text that I can't really visualize at all, the reading goes much more slowly.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Catlady

So ... for those who are seeing movies in their heads, how do you experience a nonfiction book of ideas, whether it's self-help or sociology or philosophy?

In my case, as a mind-map or some sort of diagram.

[latepaul]

It's odd to hear people talk about visualisation as if it's a choice. That's not really how my mind works. I mean I can deliberately visualise something but usually if someone starts to describe something then I "see" it. Even if I don't have all the details.

For example if someone says, "I was walking my dog in the park today". I'll imagine (involuntarily) that person walking a dog. I may or may not know which breed their dog is. If not it'll be a sort of generic mutt. Depending on who it is I may not know what park, or may not know the park even if I do. I'll probably see them walking through something that looks a lot like the nearest park to me.

There are definitely times when I can't see something. In particular my spatial reasoning is poor. If an author describes the layout of a set of rooms say, then I may get confused. I used to get frustrated by this but now I reckon if it's important to the plot that you can get from the kitchen to the bedroom via the back stairs then they'll let me know. Unless it was a murder mystery and that was something that was a clue. Well then it's a clue I missed, hey ho.

I do try not to skim (or skip) passages but that's more my OCDish tendency to want to feel I've read every word. If I find my mind wandered I do go back and re-read passages that I read but didn't take in.

[BookCat]

I'm a very visual person and philosophy was one of the courses I had to take way back in my first year at uni. This was a long time ago (I graduated in 1980), but I remember that course having some of the most difficult reading I've ever encountered. With most of it, I just read it and hoped that something would click. However, I understood the tutorials. If anyone has read Gulliver's Travels and remembers the silly factions disputing trivial things, that's what I would picture during the tutorials. I imagined old men with white beards (philosophers) arguing and dividing into groups of thought, each convinced that they were right.

On the whole, though, I think this type of writing uses a different part of the brain, maybe the left hemisphere, from fiction and visualisation which perhaps uses the right hemisphere.