Tag Archives: Dreams

December 3, 2024 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I’ve Had Dreams About


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A photo of an unmade bed whose white rumpled covers have been pulled back to air out the white sheets for a while. Or maybe this person simply didn’t want to make the bed! Above the bed there is a headboard that has a small lamp on it as well as a series of paintings of four colourful and possibly tropical birds hanging on the white wall above. My vivid imagination sometimes spills over into the dream world, and with this freebie post I finally get to talk about them today. Here are several books I’ve had dreams about over the years.

1. The Clan of the Cave Bear series by Jean M. Auel

My Dream: It involved hunting mammoths near a glacier and then triumphantly bringing as much meat home with my fellow hunters as we could carry. The ground was rocky and uneven, so I worried about tripping as I sprinted over it. I also remember how itchy my wrap was, how the perspiration trickled down my body as I ran even though it was a chilly day, and how elated I felt when the hunt ended. (I was not the person whose spear brought down the mammoth, though).

 

2. Minecraft: The Island (Official Minecraft Novels, #1) by Max Brooks

(Did you all know this is a book series as well as a video game?)

My Dream: I was the Steve character in the dream, and I was attempting to build a shelter before night fell and the monsters came out. Daylight was not lasting as long as it should, so I was rushing to finish my work. I woke up when a creeper snuck up behind me and blew everything up.

 

3. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

My Dream: After being assigned to be a Handmaid, I quietly began looking for a way to escape. Could I trust the other Handmaids not to report me to the Aunts? I wasn’t sure, but I wanted to bring as many of them with me as I could. All I needed was the chance to start running and never look back.

 

4. The Abominable Snowman (Choose Your Own Adventure, #13) by R.A. Montgomery

(I am not 100% sure this was the particular Choose Your Own Adventure book that gave me a nightmare as I was only about 9 or 10 when it happened, but it was something similar to this title at the very least).

My Dream: It started in the middle of the book as I was trying to hide from the monster. I could see the words of the current page projected in front of me and needed to decide which option to take. No matter which option I chose, though, the monster always found me in the end. The dream repeated a few times before I woke up frightened.

Which books, if any, have you had dreams about?

 

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November 16, 2023 · 1:00 am

Lucid Dreaming: A Review of The Dreamcatchers

Book cover for The Dreamcatchers by Ignat Drozdov. Image on cover is a painting of a blue-skinned, blue man who has a lightbulb installed in his head. You can see a cross-section of it and his head. The lightbulb is emitting a yellow glow, and the man has a pensive expression on his face. Title: The Dreamcatchers

Author: Ignat Drozdov

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: January 10, 2023

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: 10 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

On Jay’s first day at a new job he’s thrown into the murky business of lucid dreaming. He feels that it’s a fresh start and a chance to get away from his own nightmares, but not everything is as it seems.

Review:

Content Warning: Assault, battery, needles, and injections.

Imagine the joy of reliving the same dream as often as you wish.

Being able to control your dreams sounds incredible to me. I was eager to discover what this process would be like from the perspective of workers who were paid to medically guide clients through it without fully understanding the science behind it all. Most stories tend to write such a thing from the point of view of the scientist who invented it or the person experiencing it. Allowing characters who are only slightly more knowledgable about the topic than the reader was to narrate it opened up so many opportunities for extrapolating what might happen next or trying to piece the limited number of clues together before the twist. It was enjoyable for me as a reader to have this time to compare my perspective to that of the main character, and I’ll be keeping my eyes out for more from this author.

I would have liked to have more opportunities to explore Jay’s difficult past given how important it was to who he was when the audience first met him. There were hints about what sorts of bad memories he might be trying to avoid as he adjusted to his new job, but it would have been helpful to see them coalesce together more firmly by the final scene.

With that being said, the ending made me gasp. I ended up rereading the entire tale over again to see if could find additional clues about what happened in that final scene and why Jay ended up with the fate he did. Science fiction thrives when authors take risks with what they write in my opinion as both a reader of and writer in this genre, so I commend Mr. Drozdov for putting so much faith into his audience’s ability to figure out what was happening without overloading us with clues about what was to come.

The Dreamcatchers was creative and thought provoking.

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August 9, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: The Strangest Dream I’ve Had Recently

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Five little green plants are growing in five glass test tubes as the tubes sit in a test tube tray on a white counter in the sunlight. Back in May I dreamed that I was standing in a laboratory watching scientists work. I may have been a scientist, too, although the dream logic wasn’t very clear on that.

We had a limited amount of time left to solve the biggest problem humanity has ever faced: the plants were revolting.

That is to say, every single plant on Earth had become sentient and was furious with humanity.

Not only were we eating the plants themselves, we were stealing their children (seeds) and eating them, too.

Plantkind had run out of patience with us. They were so angry, in fact, that they made a unanimous decision to stop reproducing forever.

The scientists I was working with had captured a plant specimen and was attempting to find her seeds. When they realized she had none, they decided to try reasoning with her. She was about the size of a small doll, dark green, and almost too angry to speak with us.

Didn’t she realize that her species, too, would die out if there were no seeds left?

She knew and didn’t care. So far the scientists had only strengthened her resolution to carry out her plan and encourage every other plant to do the same.

And then I woke up.

(Aren’t dreams odd sometimes?)

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May 18, 2020 · 1:00 am

Let’s Talk About Vivid Quarantine Dreams

 

As COVID-19 continues to dominate news coverage and social media feeds, it’s no surprise that the pandemic has also started affecting people’s sleep routines. Many people are reporting vivid, sometimes stressful dreams…

From Why You’re Having So Many Weird Dreams During Quarantine, According to Sleep Experts

Six clouds digitally altered to spell out the word dreams against a blue sky When I first read that article last month, I didn’t think it applied to me.

My sleeping and dreaming habits have remained more or less the same since this pandemic began.

As always, the dreams I remember are vivid and exciting. The dream version of me often does things that real-life Lydia would never dare to. I’ve heard this is something that’s more common for us introverts, although I don’t know how true that is.

Then my brain decided to kick into overdrive. I should note that I’ve dreamt about various versions of this mansion for at least a decade now. The exact layout of the rooms change, but it always looks Victorian, is filled with heavy, wooden furniture, has poor lighting, and has more floors than I can generally manage to explore before I wake up. Oh, and it’s always haunted, and not by friendly ghosts.

On the rare occasions I make it all the way up to the attic, some pretty exciting stuff happens there involving me getting into long intellectual discussions with various deities and mythological beings. But this dream was typical in that it ended long before I thought to walk up all of those flights.

In the dream, my spouse and I decided to take a long weekend trip to visit this mansion. There were only a few other folks who had booked rooms, so we thought we could adhere to the physical distancing requirements well while still having a nice change of scenery.

A ghostly hand attempting to push through a Victorian mirror.The mansion was as beautiful, dark, and Victorian as ever. There was an old-fashioned library in it this time, and I ached to read all of the books. The problem was that the ghosts made their presence known long before I finished exploring the house, much less settled down to read for a while. 

I was singing “Henry the VIII I Am” when one of them suddenly appeared on a staircase. 

We’re never happy to see each other. Normally, the dream ends with me racing upstairs to find the attic before they catch me since that’s the one place in the mansion they don’t seem to be allowed to go.

This time, I realized there was a second safe place to run to: the bedroom my spouse and I had been given for the weekend.

He and I ran to it, slammed the door shut, and locked it with the ghost on our tails. 

What made this dream unique was that the lock and door kept her out. She could ask us nicely to open it and let her enter, but she could do nothing else without an open door and invitation. We were safe, albeit trapped in a much smaller space than we’d been expecting to enjoy for the weekend. 

Now if that isn’t a quarantine dream, I don’t know what is! Yes, she was definitely a ghost and not a vampire. I wish the story had continued so I knew what happened next.

What vivid things have you all been dreaming about this spring?

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October 29, 2015 · 12:37 pm

A Tale of Six Pies

six pies

Photo credit: Alpha.

I have two basic kinds of dreams: ordinary ones about the somewhat-boring things everyone has to do in life and and pulse-pounding, action-adventure tales where I narrowly outrun zombies, ghosts, or other malevolent forces. (Sometimes I don’t outrun them, of course, and then I get to see what life is like as a sci-fi monster. But I digress).

Then there is my bizarrely specific dream about buying pies from a few nights ago. How many pies, you ask? Six of them, and each one a different flavour.

What two adults with small-to-moderate appetites could be expected to do with so many pies before they grew stale remains to be seen, but dream-me was thrilled with what I’d picked up at the grocery store. I thought we’d start with the lemon meringue, and then move onto the chocolate one that looked a lot like this festive pie pictured above. Just before I woke up, I was imagining how content we’d feel with bellies full of pie. It was the nicest thing I could possibly think of at the time.

This was one of those dreams that  took me a moment or two to separate from reality when I woke up. Did we really have six pies sitting on the counter in the kitchen? No, thank goodness. Our kitchen was as pie-free as it ever is.

The dream has stuck with me, though, as I wonder what could have caused it. I’m not craving this type of dessert. I haven’t actually been craving many sweets at all. If I were going to eat them, Halloween candy would be closer to what I’d want at this time of year. There are only so many weeks when you can get certain types of it, after all!

I wish there were more scientific studies about what dreams mean. Almost everything I’ve found on this topic is infused with woo or spiritual beliefs that I don’t share. Those interpretations are great for people who believe in those things, but I’d love to see someone come up with explanations that don’t rely on them.

If I ever win the lottery or sell so many books that I become independently wealthy, I’m going to study this as scientifically as I possibly can. My theory is that the emotions we feel when we’re dreaming are far more important than the content of the dreams themselves.

I’ve had peaceful dreams about zombies and terrifying dreams about something as simple as trying to find a clean, dry, available toilet in a building that seems to contain everything else in the entire world but that.

What odd things have you been dreaming about lately? How do you interpret them?

And more importantly, has this post made you crave pie? 🙂

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