Dreaming About a Book

Ask a dreamer whether the words stayed put and you usually get the same answer. Text in dreams tends to shift, blur or rearrange itself when looked at directly, which is common enough to be treated as a feature of dreaming rather than as a symbol. That aside, books are read as knowledge, as record, and as the account you keep of your own life.

The unreadable page

Dreamers often describe knowing exactly what a book is about while being unable to read a single line of it. Interpreters treat this as understanding that has not yet found words, which fits neatly with how people describe the experience. The plainer explanation is that the systems involved in reading do not operate normally during sleep, and both accounts can sit together without conflict.

Which book, and whose

• A book you owned as a child. Read as a return to an earlier way of understanding something.
• A blank book. Traditionally the most open version of the image, taken as a section of life not yet written.
• A book being taken from you. Usually read as knowledge or authority you feel is being withheld.
• A book you cannot find in a library. Read as searching for an answer you suspect exists somewhere.

Reading as record

The older strand treats a book as a ledger, something in which matters are set down and cannot easily be altered. That reading gives the image a weight the modern one lacks, and it is where phrases about a life being written come from. A dream about books in the life of someone who reads constantly is a different object from the same dream in the life of someone who has not opened one in years, and no entry can bridge that gap for you. What the image means to you is the part worth trusting.