# What people experience when reading...



## Eledhwen (Sep 30, 2013)

I once said, amongst a group of friends, "You know the film that plays in your mind when you're reading a book?" I was going to carry on with a "Well..." but every other person in the group shook their heads, with answers that all amounted to "No." This was a revelation to me, and helped me understand why some people just can't get into books. I'd also never understood how people could fail to see mixed metaphors, when the images would certainly jar against each other as they were spoken/read. Again, now I understood.

I was wondering how much the enjoyment of Tolkien relies on a visual imagination, or whether the beauty of the words themselves give sufficient enjoyment. I hope people will be able to categorise themselves in this poll, so a picture (there I go again!) will emerge:


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## Starbrow (Sep 30, 2013)

I'm not sure where I fall. I will get lost in a good book, like LOTR, but the images in my head are not very detailed. However, I can't stand it if what I visualize doesn't make sense. For example, I once read a book that had centaurs riding in a carriage. The image of that is absurd and breaks my suspension of disbelief. I think it is one of the stupidest books I ever read because the author obviously did not visualize the characters of the centaurs doing the things she said they did. It felt like she wrote the book with humans as the characters and then went back and substituted centaurs for the humans. When I read the story it was so obvious that is was not visualized.

On a side note, one of things I do as a teacher to help students who have difficulty with reading comprehension is to teach them to visualize what they read.


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## host of eldar (Oct 1, 2013)

Generally my imagination takes the lead when I read any book. It is far more easy if the author is talented in describing events. When author says “the man entered the city hall” I simultaneously imagine a city hall with guards and other important people and so on.. When author gives one more detail, I then shape and rearrange my imaginary city hall with the new detail. Inevitably that causes some minor troubles for me..
But Tolkien has an extraordinary talent in creating a fictional environment and he is unrivalled in this matter. Especially intro of the Hobbit, former chapters of the LOTR, Green Dragon conversations, Old Forest, Tom Bombadil chapters have a great taste of visual imagination. I almost feel somehow forced to walk in an imaginary world which is crazily coherent in its self boundaries..


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## Eledhwen (Oct 1, 2013)

I've experienced both the host of eldar and Starbrow's scenaria; both are annoying. I have frequently had a character fully visualised in my head before the author adds something like blond hair or a sallow face. The character then morphs before my mind's eye and, instead of experiencing an adventure, I'm back reading a book.


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## jallan (Oct 1, 2013)

Nils Ivar Agøy has a paper entitled “Vague of Vivid? Descriptions in _The Lord of the Rings_” in the most recent issue of _Tolkien Studies_ which is very much about this. Well many reader claim to enjoy the completeness and lushness of Tolkien’s description, Agøy finds that on a closer look Tolkien writes quite differently for the most part.

Agøy finds that Tolkien is indeed mostly vague in his descriptions, but this very vagueness aids many readers in picturing his scenes and characters. He sees Tolkien himself as only mostly vaguely picturing his characters. Tolkien himself describes Gollum is somewhat different and contradictory ways. Gollum is first often described as “black” but later is pictured as “bone-white”. Tolkien is more likely to picture furniture as “comfortable” than to actually describe the furniture objectively.

Tolkien never describes Legolas, or Gimli, or even Pippen sufficiently to tell us their hair-colour or eye-colour. We are only told that Legolas is extremely good-looking and that Gimli has a beard while the others don’t and that is all we are told. Agøy finds the best described character in _The Lord of the Rings_ to be Tom Bombadil, probably, Agøy thinks, because Tolkien had only to call to mind the Dutch doll on which Tom Bombadil was based. Goldberry is likewise well described, Agøy suggests, because she was designed to make a pair with Tom.

Agøy suggests that it is this vagueness of Tolkien’s which allows the reader to so easily imagine what Tolkien is writing about. He suggests that is this vagueness that bothers some who claim that _The Lord of the Rings_ is not literature. It lacks the concrete details that they expect to find in what they call literature. But indeed this particularizing of individuals is a relatively modern thing. The only detailed description of persons in Malory’s _Le Morte d’Arthur_ is a mention of Arthur’s grey eyes.

When I was a child, I used to imagine every book I read as though it were a film or a television show.

Scott McCloud in his superb book _Understanding Comics_ suggests strongly that the characters who people are intended to identify with succeed best when they are simply drawn, and not individualized. Look for the overwhelmingly laudatory descriptions of this book on the web. Tolkien similarly tries not to mostly not force the reader to see a clear picture from Tolkien’s imagination but to fill out the picture from the reader’s own imagination.

Tolkien very much liked the illustrations of _The Lord of the Rings_ by Cor Blok, and Blok mostly made minimalist pictures in which he attempted to leave out everything he did not think was absolutely necessary. Tolkien himself bought three of Blok’s paintings, reputedly the only paintings of scenes in _The Lord of the Ring_ he bought from any artist. Blok’s _Lord of the Rings_ pictures are now available in a book by Peter Collier called _A Tolkien Tapestry: Pictures to accompany _The Lord of the Rings, published by HarperCollins.


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## Erestor Arcamen (Oct 2, 2013)

I get lost in the story. It's like, I'm aware that I'm reading but I'm unaware of my surroundings, I see the images in my head almost as if it's playing like a movie, while I'm reading. Really hard to explain but it's an amazing feeling!


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## Eledhwen (Oct 6, 2013)

Erestor Arcamen said:


> I get lost in the story. It's like, I'm aware that I'm reading but I'm unaware of my surroundings, I see the images in my head almost as if it's playing like a movie, while I'm reading. Really hard to explain but it's an amazing feeling!


When you read like this, it's not just difficult to put the book down, it's impossible because you are inside the story and time in the real world means nothing; because the book is the real world. Only if you are interrupted, or when physical exhaustion takes over your intellect can you return; and Eru help you if you have school or work the next day!


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## Maiden_of Harad (Oct 7, 2013)

Never have I been so lost in a book that I couldn't put it down if I needed to. Which is odd since I enjoy reading, but here's what I usually experience...

A narrator, always invisible, usually begins describing the story. Then, scenery and characters emerge, and a movie begins to be taped in my head (if it's a first-time read). If the description is compelling, I begin to feel the actions of the characters, the feelings they feel, ect. At the end, the invisible narrator appears once more. When I re-read a book, it's like watching a film while editing it-adding new clips, cutting out old ones. There's also the warm glow of re-reading a beloved book.


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## Sulimo (Oct 9, 2013)

I have very poor imagination, but very good retention. Hobbits and Gollum still look like the Rankin Bass characters in my mind. That is why I love fan art. I can see the images that people create, and realize that it either looks exactly like it should, or completely misses the mark. However, I am spellbound by Tolkien's superb ability to craft a scene. There is a story and significant meaning behind every blade of grass in Middle Earth. To me reading his work is just as amazing as seeing a masterpiece by Jan Van Eyck or Van Gogh. You do not need a vivid imagination to appreciate a masterpiece.


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## Eledhwen (Oct 10, 2013)

jallan said:


> Nils Ivar Agøy finds that Tolkien is indeed mostly vague in his descriptions, but this very vagueness aids many readers in picturing his scenes and characters.


Now I'm going to have to read it all again! I'd like to look at this. But that is an amazing skill. I have read other authors who cannot bring the panoramic canvas to mind that Tolkien's work does (often acclaimed to be comparable to Tolkien 'at his best'). They cleave a pathway through nothingness with stopovers at islands of places and events. Is this due to over-describing these stopovers? This is fascinating! I also wonder; how much does the naming of people and places contribute to the reader's mental image of them? Tolkien was, of course, a master at this.


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## Erestor Arcamen (Oct 10, 2013)

Eledhwen said:


> When you read like this, it's not just difficult to put the book down, it's impossible because you are inside the story and time in the real world means nothing; because the book is the real world. Only if you are interrupted, or when physical exhaustion takes over your intellect can you return; and Eru help you if you have school or work the next day!



Exactly! When I got Harry Potter book 7, I stayed up all night reading. I'd look at my clock and it was 1am, what felt like 10 minutes later I look again and its 4:30am ahhhh!


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## HLGStrider (Oct 12, 2013)

For me, and I admit to not having a very visual imagination, even with people and things I know well, I think of them in terms of words, not pictures, it was a toss up between 2 and 3 because sometimes I'll have a flash of that movie or that picture, but for the most part I'm devouring words not images and I'm very aware of the fact. I like words. I'm more interested in what people are saying or feeling than what they look like and books that get caught up in minute details of facial features and clothes actually turn me off a little. Who cares what they look like? What are they DOING?

I have this weakness in my own writing. I put a book up for critique recently on a critique site I joined and someone commented that "it's four chapters in and I still don't know what the main character is wearing." My first thought was, "Yeah, I don't care what she is wearing. I think I said 'dress' at some point. Why do you need to know more than that?" Of course that person who critiqued it devoted an entire paragraph to her main character's armor right in the first chapter of the work she put up for critique so apparently she likes that but I was yawning and thinking, "Will this dandy every stop getting dressed and do something?"

Dress is the most blatant example, but I have to force myself to see beyond the characters. A lot of times I do sort of see them but it is their actions on a blank sound stage. I imagine a lot of Middle Earth being bare and rocky because I don't have time to look beyond the few feet where my book friends are standing and see where they are so I just give them some dirt to stand on or a bolder to sit on and let them play everything out in this minimalist scenery.


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## Kolbitar (Nov 6, 2013)

When I first read Tolkien, I was immersed. I went back to his works, over and over again, and I wasn't cognoscente of all the many reasons I returned. The words that he writes are delicious. The full content and form of his literature are nutritious to the mind, the soul, the intellect....when I was young, I was grateful for his works, and I became aware that I appreciated his art, and I became aware to what depth and breadth of appreciation--that I was actually appreciating his works in the same revered ways that I'd heard people speak of Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Mozart...before I could ever come close to appreciating any other great artist. Here is something, that at even a young age for me, needed no interpretation, no teacher, no guide. Here is the real food in the world. And as I grow older, my mind polluted by cinematic imageries and the flotsam and jetsam of life, I can't appreciate the same newness that first baptized my imagination in the works--but every word is so well placed that I'm still finding newness of appreciation in technical, poetical, and prosaic elements of the body of work now that it's an old friend to me. And when I chance upon quiet time, with coffee and candles, and in my comfortable armchair overlooking my own garden, through my square front-window, in my block house, I do still find myself falling back (visually) into that world (the pre-Jackson world, if-you-will), if only for moments now, rather than hours. But, the taste of those words....have you ever read the books out-loud? The words really do fit together nicely. Every one of them.


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## chrysophalax (Nov 10, 2013)

I agree entirely with Erestor and Eledhwen. Once a book captures me, I'm at it's mercy until the final page.


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## Eledhwen (Nov 12, 2013)

Beautifully put, Kolbitar.


Kolbitar said:


> But, the taste of those words....have you ever read the books out-loud? The words really do fit together nicely. Every one of them.


I have five children; so I've had excellent excuses to read Tolkien out loud. When my (much younger than now) daughter was ill, I read Roverandom to her in one sitting.


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