this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2025
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I can only speak for myself (#5) here, but I can barely enjoy books. If they're any sort of fiction, where I have to imagine a world, characters, objects, ... it's very exhausting. I read fiction books in school, but haven't picked up a fiction book out of my own will in years. But I do enjoy non-fiction books, especially when they convey Ideas you don't need (or maybe can't) picture visually.
Side note: I found people who read a lot (of fiction) often being critical of movie adaptations. I never understood this, because even 'meh' movies offer a far superior experience than just reading the book to me. It took me a while to realize that movie adaptations are a kind of 'disability aid' to my aphantasia.
The medium of books are qualitatively different from movies. With movies it's all about the context, the action, the dynamism, the mood. With books, it's more of a mind meld with the author, and you get richer subtext, connotations, shadings of meaning, and inner monologue.
If you've ever seen a movie that tries to hew exactly to a novelistic source (e.g. the Discworld movies), it's an extremely plodding thing. If you've ever read a book that tries to carry a story onwards from a cinematic source (e.g. Star Wars EU), the pacing and treatment feels very different. It's unavoidable.
It's unfortunate about aphantasia limiting your enjoyment of books. I wonder if my "1" referring to the chart above limits my involvement with nonfiction and purely conceptual writing.
I'm a total and absolute 5 no visualization no inner monologue and I absolutely love fiction.
That guy just doesn't like fiction. Fiction has plenty of "facts" and events. That make it plenty enjoyable. It's no different then a nonfiction history book. Just it's not about earth.
So his lack of visualization has nothing to do with his dislike of fiction.
Be just doesnt like it.
Super interesting that you enjoy fiction so much. What I struggle with most is that visual language is often very dense in information, but I can't do a lot with it. Imagine something like this:
"Light spilled in through the high windows, tinting the hallway into beautiful autumn colors. It looked as if the sunlight was dancing, but of course nothing moved except the dust suspended in the air."
I would read this and think: cool, I bet this would look amazing if I could see it, but all the information I can actually use from these sentences is "A hallway has high windows, it's maybe morning or evening". Everything else is either visual or obvious to me. So fiction books are more exhausting, because I constantly filter out things that I can't really use. It's like I'm reading a text where a person constantly rambles and can't get to the damn point. I'm really curious how or why this is different for you?
Also, I do think fiction books and non-fiction history books are very different. Simply because an author can build a world, story and characters to convey some deeper meaning or overarching theme, or use strong imagery or metaphores. All of that is more uncommon for historic books from my experience. The above example in a history book would probably look something more like "Orange light entered the hallway through the high windows".
Good to know.
Gosh, have to say there are more aphantasics around than I would have guessed.