I once watched a Batman cartoon that had Batman facing the Scarecrow. Well in the cartoon, Batman was put to sleep or something like that and couldn’t get out of it and couldn’t figure out what was going on until he grabbed a newspaper and tried to read it. When it was all jumbled jimberish, he knew he was in a dream because he said you can’t read in your dreams because it is a different part of the brain that controls the reading that controls the dreams. I am sorry to say, but I am almost positive that I have been able to read in my dreams a lot. Was this just something made up for the cartoon for entertainment or is this suppose to be some sort of scientific statment and I’m just an exception??
I would say you are an exception.
Dreams, dream control, and lucid dreaming are a hobby of mine.
(the neat thing about this hobby is, if you fail at it one night, you have the rest of your life to try again;))
Anyway, a lucid dream exercise pertains to trying to read. While in a dream state you look at something, turn away, then look at it again (a good object for this task is a clock) if the object changes on the second look, you know you are dreaming. (there is much, much, much more to it than that. This is just a summary).
I’ve found during my experiments that it is almost impossible to read something while dreaming. HOWEVER…If reading something is an important part of the dream, part of the “plot” if you will, then I’m sure you remember reading in your dream. The rememberance of dreams has a lot to do with what actually happened in them, though it may not be the same as what actually DID happen. (clear as mud, isn’t it?:p)
Dreams fascinate me. I like this thread.
HighSoci, this is fucking tooo funny. i read the thread title, and thought to myself, “This is about Batman the Animated Series, i’ll bet”.
anyway, i think it’s bullshit. Bruce Wayne’s theory seemed to be that the reading part of the brain shuts down, or something, while dreaming. but i know for a fact that i and friend i’ve talked to have read in dreams.
i suppose i only know for a fact that i have read, but anyway. it’s bullshit.
jb
Actually, I’ve heard the ‘reading is controlled in a different part of the brain’ thing before, so I remember vividly in one dream where I could read stuff written in Spanish. I’ve never recalled reading anything in English (my native language).
Maybe the part of your brain that handles foreign languages is closer to the dream center? 
Previous thread from a couple of years ago: can you read in your dreams? That thread inspired me to read in a dream for the first time.
I was going to ask this exact question after I heard that on Batman. However things cameup and it slipped my mind. How very odd. But it seems to be untrue. I’ve read things in my dreams.
I’ve read things in my dreams. Usually comic strips – the words themselves aren’t confused, but the strips are rarely funny in any normal way. Just kinda disconnected, like the dream itself. Also, sometimes I’ll be dreaming a story, and I’ll see it on the page as if it were typed. Sometimes the only memory I’ll have of the name of someone in my dream is the shape of the word on the page.
I sometimes remember reading in my sleep, but it’s possible that I just knew what I was supposed to read rather than actually reading it.
By the way, my first thought on reading the thread title was “Are they talking about that Batman episode?” I think the villain was the Mad Hatter rather than Scarecrow though.
I read in my dreams occasionally. Sometimes I’ll go to sleep reading a book and then dream I’m still reading the book. Only it’s my subconcious controlling what’s happening in the book. Made for some really weird moments where I’ve woken up and discovered that the last 4 chapters of the book I’ve got were made up.
You can’t read in your dreams? Oops, no one told my subconscious that.
I heard you can’t die in your dreams, but my subconscious put an end to that idea.
I don’t know if this is relevant, but I have a buttload of trouble trying to make sense of the time display on my clock radio if I half awaken in the middle of the night.
± : 49 am
no wait…
1 : H9 am
Naah, can’t be…
1:49 am
Right. Got it. Oh shit, it’ll be five o’clock in another minute, and I’ve gotta go to work.
I really have to wake up completely to be able to make sense of that damn thing.
I am glad to know that I’m not the only one that has been able to read in their dreams. I have done so many things in my dreams that I was told couldn’t happen and was beginning to think maybe my dreams are just all weird anyway. I too have died many times in my dreams and could see people all around me at my funeral but couldn’t do anything about it. My wife on the other hand says that she hardly ever dreams, but I find this almost hard to believe because I dream every single time I go to sleep. I think she just can’t remember her dreams so therefore doesn’t believe she had one.
Another quick question… Anyone have that dream where you couldn’t really see anything or open your eyes all the way up because the sun was too bright?
I’ve read like signs adn stuff in my dreams. I only remember once as to being so aware it was a dream, I asked someone in my dream if it were a dream, and when she said yes, let’s just say I took full advantage of my imagination…
I read short things in dreams all the time. I can’t recall reading a book in a dream, but I dream about bookstores and libraries frequently, and the titles on the book spines are all readable. More rarely, I write in my dreams.
I’m not sure why I haven’t remember reading books, but that might be because I tend to only remember dreams about ordinary things for a few minutes after I wake up. I read book all the time, so if I read one in a dream it wouldn’t be likely to stick out. Come to think of it, the longest thing I can recall reading in a dream is a flyer announcing a contest. I probably wouldn’t remember it at all except it was a band that wanted to see and I was later very surprised that what I read was accurate…more than six months before it was announced that very band was going to be playing at our college.
Right before I woke up I dreamt that I was reading something and I made out the first part of the sentence before I woke up.
Heck, I have whole dreams about reading Latin where I wake up periodically to look up a word from the text in my dream in the dictionary!
heck - am I weird? I read in dreams very very often, and it is sort of annoying becauss if I wake up in the middle of this (dream)story or book that I am really enjoying, then I can’t get back to it. I end up feeling as I would if seomone took away a real book from me when I was engrossed in it and nowhere near finished. A sort of “Person from Porlock” problem, I suppose.
I remember reading in my dreams, but when I get really interested in what I’m reading, I can no longer focus where I’m looking, just my peripheral vision works. I think I read somewhere ( while awake 
) that thoses parts of your eyes are involved in dreaming.
I had a dream where I was at in an outdoor market in Europe reading from a book at a used book stall. It was a complicated and surreal short story, and I really wish I had written it down the minute I woke up. It was about a surgeon who replaced people’s internal organs with animals. So, like, there was a woman who said her heart was heavy, and he replaced her heart with a bird. But I can’t remember enough of the details to actually write the story down. 
YMMV - but I have difficulty reading anything longer than about a sentence when dreaming. The letters and words are fine, it’s just that the sentences don’t make sense. I remember reading in general, but when I try to concentrate on the printed word, it changes.
I also cannot dial a phone correctly in my dreams - I keep dialing a wrong number or forget the number halfway through - it’s a good indicator for lucid dreaming.
I guess for me, my brain can’t concentrate on the dream along with content “outside” the dream.