I had that rare dream last night that I actually remembered when I awoke, but alas, the details as they often do have faded away as the hours have gone by.
I often have semi-lucid dreams about being able to fly (except when I need to fly in the dream to get away from some trouble/the bad guy, of course), but I cannot recall ever having a dream about reading a book before.
It was really odd, waking up realizing that I was dreaming about doing something that had so little activity attached to it. I also faintly recall that I couldn’t quite make out the words, they were a little blurry, but I kept at it.
Anyone else ever have this?
Somehow this struck me as profoundly strange.
Perhaps this should be in MPSIMS, but it is phrased in the form of a general, open question.
I not only dream about reading a book, I dream about reading the SDMB.
There was one time I was asleep and I dreamed about the SDMB. I can’t remember most of it but there was something about this guy Wendell who was talking about how he dreams sometimes and it is about reading the SDMB. Crazy.
I have dreamed of being in front of my computer before (because I am so often I suppose, both at home and at work), but if I recall correctly, I think the screen was full of unreadable mush and it was part of some other dream experience that involved other activities.
I guess the strangeness of this particular dream is that I don’t remember ever dreaming of a completely sedentary activity before…usually it’s running, flying, falling, driving, fighting, dreams of war, etc, etc…
<<Edit…you’re not Shagsnasty on the go-bengals.com board, are you?>>
I remember an episode of Batman: the Animated Series where reading in a dream was a plot point. The Mad Hatter used some sort of high-tech gizmo to trap Batman in a dream world. Batman realized that he was dreaming because all the writing he saw (books, newspapers, signs) was meaningless gibberish. Supposedly, it isn’t possible to read in a dream because reading is a left-brain function, while dreams come from the right side of your brain.
Since this is looking for personal experiences, I think it’s most suited for IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Now this is getting somewhere. I am wondering now if anyone has ever actually read something meaningful whilst asleep, and remembered it.
[sleep researcher hat on] The left brain/right brain dichotomy is largely meaningless. And no one really knows where or how dreams are generated. This is partly because, paradoxically, brain activity during dreaming looks strikingly similar to brain activity during waking. [sleep researcher hat off]
I remember that Batman cartoon. A few weeks after seeing it I dreamed that I was reading a book, and all the words made perfect sense to me. I woke up and was very sad to realize that Batman, a trusted character from my childhood, didn’t know what he was talking about.
I do. Well, if by “meaningful” you mean text I can read, and not gibberish. I wouldn’t call it earth shatteringly *important *or anything.
In fact, since reading and sleeping are my two favorite activities, I consider those times when I read in my dreams to be doubleplus bonus points good! Often, it’s passages from a book I’m reading, or real or imagined posts here. Occasionally it’s new and significant information to me personally, or it seems important within the dream, but mostly it’s just pleasurable, like my waking reading.
A couple of times I’ve had one of those dreams where I read and suddenly understand some concept or subject I’m studying in waking life, and then when I wake up I still get it. Those are good. I’m crossing my fingers for one of those tonight, as I have a chemistry test tomorrow and I can’t seem to memorize the charges of the polyatomic ions we need to know for it!
Hmm. I never can recall having a dream thus. Somehow the words didn’t make sense, and I recall being detached in a way, where I realized that what I was reading wasn’t coherent, yet I continued anyway.
Somebody dig up Freud…
I love reading, I’m a fairly lucid dreamer, and I have almost never been able to read coherently in my dreams. I think I have once or twice, but it’s usually gibberish. This sounds like more of an individual thing.
You know what else I can’t do in dreams? Taste or smell. I can do almost anything else, but I can’t do these things.
I recall a dream I had years ago. I don’t remember the specifics of the scene, but it was one of the old computer games. The part that relates to the thread is that the scene progessed for a moment and then across the bottom of the screen came the words…
Press enter to continue.
That’s when I realized I was actually dreaming about playing a game. It was rather odd.
Oh sure, I’ve had dreams about reading and had it make sense. Usually it was more of whatever I was reading before bed. I can quite clearly remember dreaming a few chapters of an “Anne of Green Gables” book when I was a teenager.
I can read quite clearly in my dreams and usually remember what it was, for a little while anyway. Some of my dreams are very boring though. One of my top three, most-loathed dreams involves me at work trying to put order numbers into the computer and messing it up. This goes on and on and on, then I wake up and have to do it for real. It’s not quite fair somehow.
I have the flying dream - more so when I was younger, but still enjoy it occasionally - for anyone else who has the flying dream, and loves it, I heartily recommend this - it was, quite literally, a dream come true.
Reading… yes - I sometimes have dreams in which I try to read - trouble is that I can never actually do it - in my dreams, I can’t read the page because I can’t open my eyes wide enough (I think this might be because my brain is in some way aware that my eyes are closed in reality).
When I’ve tried to read in dreams, the text is in focus but it’s either gibberish, not even recognisable words, or else the characters are some strange alien script.
Sometimes I go lucid and I’m aware that I’m dreaming but it’s like being sedated;- I can’t say I’m really awake or in control. I can fly when I’m lucid but it’s not like Superman, it’s more like surfing on the wind. Great fun, though.
Other things I can’t always do in dreams - run or dial a phone. My co-ordination just doesn’t seem to function, like dwyr’s data entry difficulties. This is so common for me that I usually recognise it and realise I’m dreaming.
I also can’t change the light level. I can flick light switches on and off without trouble, but it never gets lighter or darker. Wierd.
I’ve dreamed I was reading. Similar to the other posters the words have been blurred and unreadable but I don’t think it mattered at the time.
I’ve learned to play a simple guitar song in a dream, before I really knew how to play. I had just bought a guitar, could play piano, knew what strings were what on the guitar and how the frets worked, and figured out the fingering for this song while dreaming. When I woke up, I went to my guitar and tried playing the song, I had it right. It seemed quite cool at the time.
I sometimes dream I’m with friends in the audience at a concert, but the band members are all taken ill and we’re called up (for no reason) to stand in - despite our protests, we’re shoved onto the stage - so we pick an instrument each and start playing, and despite being completely unskilled and untrained, we turn out to be brilliant, bringing the house down.
The musical talent does not, however, transfer back to the real world, in my case.
Recently, for about four months, I was in online text chat for hours every day with a young lady. I often used to dream about using the computer (hardly surprising), but that was more about the concepts and ideas, plus some graphics. And, of course, I very often dreamt of her.
One night I dreamt about having a chat session with this lady, and noticing that her responses just didn’t make sense. In the dream, I was scared, because I seriously thought she’d lost her mind. The next day, I remembered the “can’t read while you’re asleep” meme, and that explained that.
The very next night, I had the same dream. And - unheard of for me - I recognised I was dreaming (remembering the previous night), and it turned into a very interesting lucid dream, only the second of my life. I decided to concentrate on trying to make sense of what was on the ‘screen’ in front of me. How much exactly could I read, and why?
It turned out that I could recognise short words - ‘the’, ‘at’, etc, but longer words were almost impossible. I was looking at the shapes of the words, I realised: names were easy to spot because of the capital and because I knew the names well (each other’s and those of mutual friends). But what happened if I looked closer at an individual, longer word, to see if I could make out the letters?
The answer was that I simply couldn’t. They were blurry, and what’s more, they kept swapping with other letters in a flowing manner, the words continually rearranging themselves, even changing positions in the sentences.
All in all, an interesting experience; I wish I had more lucid dreams.
I had a very vivid dream that I was at my office front desk and I realized I was nekkid. I immediately went to the closet and put on my navy & green jacket, then thought I’ll go tell my Boss I have to go home. But he was with a customer. I wondered if I was dreaming cause I would never go to work naked. Then I noticed a poster with some writing on it.
I thought “Batman and the Straight Dope say you can’t read in your dreams, so I’ll see if I can read this.”
I could. It was the lyrics to the Madonna Evita parody from Forbidden Hollywood.
Then I was convinced the whole thing was real, told my Boss I was leaving, and I walked outside my office wearing only my jacket.
Then I woke up.