Same here. It’s a weird experience watching the letters crawl over the page.
I’ve dreamt about reading, but I don’t recall ever seeing text and trying to read it. Rather I recall going to the library, finding a book version of a movie I’d recently seen a thread about here on the SDMB, picking it up, finding a seat, being disturbed, . . .
I thought I was dreaming about Reading once, but when I checked, it was actually Pangbourne.
I would try to read and the print was always random symbols.
The worst dream is the one where you’re at work and your rushing about the whole time. I would sometimes even do Incoming and Outgoing ledgers for shipping during my dreams.
Like a lot of folks here, I’m a would-be writer. (Okay, some of us here are real writers.) Several times I’ve dreamed I go into a bookstore, see a book with my name as the author, pick it up and open it. The text is hard to make out, but if I really concentrate I can read words and phrases. Occasionally I’ve actually gotten a useful bit of dialogue or turn of phrase out of a dream like that.
I have the occasional dream that is sort of like dreaming about writing, in which I’m making an effort to choose words to go along with the scenario I’m dreaming. Often, the same scene is repeated with slight changes as I tweak the text. I have a few novel plots floating around from this sort of dream (although I’m highly unlikely to ever write them down while awake!). A few times I’ve dreamed about academic papers I’ve been working on and been able to crank out a few really nice pages upon waking. But I can’t specifically remember if I have ever looked at written words in a dream.
Usually, when I’ve had dreams where I read something, like a passage from a book or a computer screen, when I go to look at it again the words are gibberish, blurred or different. However, sometimes I have forced my dream self to concentrate and then the words stay the same. This is a very rare occurrence, though.
I can smell and taste in my dreams. I dreamt I was in a bakery and I could smell and taste my cup of coffee and I could even feel the heat of the cup. My dreams tend to be incredibly vivid.
About the only thing I can’t do in my dreams is find a decent bathroom. I have lots of dreams about needing to find a bathroom and the only I can find is in some exposed place (a toilet sitting in the middle of a showroom floor or the bathroom doesn’t have a door). Just once I’d like to find a dream potty that was a little more private!
In my dreams about reading, there’s a limited level of ‘sense’ in the books. Basically they always have meaningful words, but meaningless sentences. Usually there’s no grammar, but even when there is, the whole sentence just makes no sense even though it’s composed of proper English words.
So basically when I’m asleep I’m the Timecube Guy.
Oh and first person to say ‘How do you know you’re awake now?’ gets a virtual punch in the face.
This is the first time I’ve heard the ‘can’t read in dreams’ thing. As noted above, I experienced reading in dreams years ago and never realized that it wasn’t normal for everyone. These threads are always interesting.
Woo! It worked! Last night I dreamt* of my flashcards (which I made two days ago in waking life) and I clearly read them as they exist, in black marker on white cards, even with the random capitalizations as I wrote them:
Pb[sup]+4[/sup] … Plumbic
Pb[sup]+2[/sup] … Plumbous
ClO[sub]4[/sub][sup]-[/sup] …perchlorate
NH[sub]4[/sub][sup]+[/sup]…ammonium
etc.
And I remember them all now! Let’s hope it sticks until the test tonight!
*(why doesn’t my spellchecker like “dreamt”? I was sure that was a word…)
My mind always reads the story, but when concentrating on the words the random symbols are visualized. It’s a clarification of my other post.
I’ve had this happen a couple of times, but not when I’m sleeping…while I’m dozing off.
In my dream-doze, I’ll be reading a book, and changing the story as I read it. Of course, once I realize I’m doing it, it will go away…but it’s kind of neat when it happens.
My screen name is taken from a dream I had about reading a book of poetry, which was so fascinating that I made a point of memorizing the author’s name so that I could track down more of their stuff. Of course when I awoke, I couldn’t remember a word of it (which is probably for the best, since I’m definitely no Coleridge). A couple days later I decided to sign up for an account here, and that name was still stuck in my head.
If I’d known that I would still be posting here years later, I probably would have put a bit more thought into the choice. Oh well.
I think I’ve dreamt about reading…and I know that, at on at least one occasion, as I was reading (in real life) while very VERY tired, the words on the page seemed to be re-writing themselves according to my train of thought. (And it was Plato’s Republic, to boot, if that’s at all metaphysically signifigant)
Those dreams are the worst!
I often have nightmares about being at work alone and utterly swamped, rushing around like a chicken with it’s head cut off, stressing over everything and feeling like I’m accomplishing nothing.
I have no problem reading in dreams. Often it is english text and I have no problem with it, sometimes it is another language and I know what it says even though I can’t “read” it.
I’ve had both kinds - dreams where I’m reading and it’s not legible, and dreams where I’m reading and it is. The ones where I’m reading something and can actually see the words usually involve books that I’ve loved for years and have reread several times. I dreamed about reading Ringworld just the other night, despite the fact that it’s been a few years since I read it last. I was reading one of the parts where Louis and Speaker are cruising around on the fly cycle thingies. I was a little disappointed because it was one of those sections where not very much is happening.
What I can’t do in dreams is run. Something happens that I need to run away from and I try to take off, but once I lift my feet off the ground they won’t come back down again. It’s like I get stuck in extremely slow motion while everything around me is moving at normal speed. I really, really hate running dreams.
Reading is a dream breaker for me.
When my eyes get tired when I’m reading and I close my eyes and the imprint is still there… that’s not a very good description, is it?.. that’s what text in a dream looks like to me.
It always wakes me up or makes my dream “pause.” That is actually pretty cool, though it doesn’t happen often.
If you’ve ever seen an episode of Star Trek: TNG where a character is on the holodeck and they stop the action and walk around the frozen CG set, you’ll know exactly what it’s like in my dreams.
I read in my dreams occasionally, but I only get a few sentences into it before it stops flowing and making sense. It’s as though my subconcious brain can only make up a few lines of text before it runs out of creativity.
This is actually quite reflective of my real life skills. I’m a very good technical writer, but I can’t creative write for $#!t. If I start writing something intended to be entertaining rather than useful, I just don’t get very far before I run out of juice.
I’ve never been able to read in a dream. Usually, the words are blurry and indistinct, like I’m trying to read without my glasses. Now that I think about it, I can’t remember ever seeing a sign in my dreams.