Reading as Thinking

 

Reading as Thinking

When I’m reading, I don’t really “see a movie.” I also don’t see still images. I see flashes—blurbs of events that pop in and out of my mind. They’re almost gif-like. I see these short clips of character actions intercut with scenery that loop a couple of times before fading away. But this only happens if I see anything at all—sometimes I’m simply absorbing the sound of the words and the meaning of the dialogue. In these moments, I’m enjoying the story and how the writing sounds in my head. Some sentences just sound amazing—they have cool rhythms. Sometimes, the dialogue is so poignant that it echoes a few times in my mind. This is the extent of my ‘hearing’ when I’m reading. I don’t hear the birds chirping or the creek gurgling. I don’t feel the wind. I’m much more invested in the story and the characters’ actions than the sights and the sounds. Details like characters’ appearances don’t really stick with me, but their actions do. I separate person from person by the way they interact with whatever hurdles the author throws at them.

When I’m reading a book, confusion will come from one of three things: I do not understand a word, I cannot identify a speaker, or I lose my focus. The first problem is easy to solve—pull out my phone and ask Google to make me smarter. The second problem only happens with some books. Certain authors like Cormac McCarthy have tenuous relationships with punctuation.  I appreciate the style and the flow this approach to writing offers, but I do find myself re-reading dialogue on certain pages several times to clarify who said what. The third problem is probably the most universally experienced problem—I have a wandering mind. I get distracted by everything. One time I reread five pages. Not in the sense that over the course of the book I had to reread five pages. I mean I have progressed five pages into a book, realized that even though I had read every word, I processed absolutely none of the information because I was too busy thinking about what kinds of choices I would have made if I had written this book. Sometimes I’m accepting an award for a book I haven’t written. Sometimes I’m being interviewed on SNL. Sometimes I’m the President. The possibilities are endless, so long as the possibilities aren’t listed on the page. However, when I am focused, I tend to analyze character actions—do I find them believable? what do they say about people in general? what would I have done if I was in their shoes? Sometimes, I’m cross-referencing the book with other things I’ve read. I’ll think about similar story beats. What does book x mean when compared with book y?

Reading as thinking is weird for me. I wish I saw the vivid pictures or movie scenes that many others describe. I think part of the reason I don’t see these things is that I’m not very artistically inclined. It’s hard for me to translate what I imagine into a real thing. Maybe I’d ‘see’ more in books if I replaced the characters with stick figures.