Without pictures, I can't read

I just read Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.  The author, Joshua Foer, is a journalist who decides to explore the world of "mental athletes"--people who compete in national and international memory contests.  These "athletes" try to out-do each other memorizing dozens of random numbers, one or more decks of shuffled playing cards, and nonsense poems in annual contests.  Joshua learns from the World Champion that none of these "mental athletes" are especially gifted or brilliant.  He learns that the methods are thousands of years old, first documented by the ancient Greeks, and that any reasonably intelligent person can learn them.  Over the next couple of years, Joshua gets trained by the world champion and wins the United States Memory Championship.

The methods involve use of images.  Preferably outlandish images.  The "mental athlete" imagines these images  stored in various places within a location they know well--a childhood home, a school, a familiar street.  The locations are called "memory palaces".  All the mental athletes rely heavily on images in memory palaces, whether they are memorizing random digits, decks of cards, speeches, or poems.

I found the book fascinating but did not see how I could apply it for anything that really mattered to me except for one thing:  reading fiction. As I read Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, I think I figured out why I don't enjoy fiction as much as many other people, including my wife Chris.  As I read fiction, I don't visualize any of the characters.  I don't picture the surroundings or the action.  I don't hear the voices.  I just read the words.  And my lack of visualizing probably explains why I keep forgetting the characters and the plot.  I keep getting lost and then lose interest.

Chris, on the other hand, tells me that she constantly pictures the characters in far more detail than the author spells out.  If the author says, "She read her husband's journal", Chris tells me that she immediately imagines a woman pulling open a drawer in the dresser, pushing aside socks, finding a black leather journal, opening it, and realizing that it is her husband's diary.  Based on what I read in Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, I imagine this helps Chris remember the characters, their situations, all the past events, dialogue, action, and so on so that she never gets lost, never loses track of what is happening.  She stays focused and engaged.  I may never be able to visualize the story as well as Chris naturally does.  But if I make an effort, I'm sure I can do much better than I have and, doing so, I can regain the joy of being unable to put a book down.