Can't picture what you read?

Short answer: Book2Life is an ebook reader that draws the story for you. As you read, the key moments of each chapter appear as illustrations beside the passage they come from, with pictures of the places and a portrait for each character. You don't have to imagine the scene; it's on the page.

Some readers never see a book in their head. For people with aphantasia, a sentence like "the moor stretched grey to the horizon" is information, not a picture. Others can picture a modern thriller fine but lose the thread in a dense classic, where a single room takes a page to describe. Either way, the author's images stay locked in the text.

What you see as you read

• Scenes. Book2Life reads ahead and picks the moments that matter in each chapter, then illustrates them right where they happen in the text.
• Settings. Establishing shots of the places, without characters, so you know where you are before the action starts.
• Characters. A portrait for each named character, drawn from the author's own description. Tap a highlighted name in the text to see who it is, any time you lose track.
• Narration. A natural voice reads along with the words highlighted, for when reading and listening together helps.

Good books to try it on

Dense description is where pictures help most:

• Wuthering Heights: two houses, three generations and a lot of moor
• Moby-Dick: the ship, the whales and the sea in detail
• Dracula: castles, crypts and storms, told in letters
• The Count of Monte Cristo: a huge cast across many years
• Middlemarch: a whole town of characters to keep straight

Each has a chapter-by-chapter summary and a character guide with portraits, free on the web.

Start reading free, or get the app for iPhone, iPad, Mac or Android.