We did an experiment - same novel, bought at the same time, read at roughly the same speed, notes kept after each chapter. I wanted to actually understand what reading was like for someone with aphantasia, rather than just sort of vaguely theorising about it. I was expecting some differences. I was not expecting the scale of them.
What reading is like for me
Reading this book was like watching a film with very specific production design that I had no control over. The protagonist's flat rendered itself automatically - I didn't choose to visualise it, it just appeared, fully formed, the moment it was described. I can tell you which window faces which direction. I know how the light falls in the afternoon. I know what the desk looks like, which I find slightly unhinged given that it's a fictional desk in a book I read once.
When two characters walk through a market scene, I'm in the market. I can hear the implied noise of it. I'm not reading about a place, I'm in a place that's running the stage directions as I go.
What reading is like for my partner
They described it as reading a very well-structured screenplay. Full narrative clarity, strong engagement with the characters, genuine emotional investment in what happens - but no pictures attached to any of it. The market scene registers as "a busy market" - a piece of information about the story, not somewhere they go.
"It's not that I'm missing something," they said. "It's more that I'm engaging with the actual text, rather than translating it into something else first."
That reframe genuinely stopped me. I'd been assuming my version was more immersive, therefore better. But there's a reasonable argument that I'm one step removed from what the author actually wrote - I'm consuming a visual interpretation of the text that my brain generates in real time. They're reading the text. Neither is wrong, but they're not the same thing.
Who got more out of it?
Different things, honestly. I had a richer sensory experience of the world in the book. They had sharper recall of the actual content - they could tell me thematic throughlines, remembered dialogue more accurately, and (I'm still a bit annoyed about this) spotted the twist three chapters before I did. I was too busy watching the scenery to notice the thing the author was clearly building towards. Great.
There's no correct way to read a book. But I did not expect to learn that I've apparently been doing it in a way that has genuine trade-offs.
Where do you land?
If this resonated - or confused you - the free test will tell you exactly where you sit on the spectrum.