Feeling a little bit sad at the moment and struggling to read. I would greatly appreciate any recommendations that you tend to read when feeling sad or just books that serve as a pick me up?

Feeling a little bit sad at the moment and struggling to read. I would greatly appreciate any recommendations that you tend to read when feeling sad or just books that serve as a pick me up?

I recently put two and two together on this subject: because I have a form of aphantasia (the inability to picture things in your mind, which is a spectrum, not a binary condition) I have a very hard time understanding world building.

My aphantasia doesn't make it so I can't picture anything, but I can picture things for split seconds if I focus. And then, they're usually memories of things I've seen IRL or images I've seen. I also cannot picture entire faces (not even my mom's face for example). Faces in my brain come out like picassos, just small images of different features in varying sizes.

I've come to terms with the fact that when I am reading and the author describes the character, I can generally just picture a faceless individual with the right hair to match the description.

But now that I've gotten into more SFF I feel like I'm missing half the experience of the book? If something is set in the real world I can get vague glimpses of houses or streets as I know them. But if something is set in a different world, no matter how much detail is provided, I can only envision what I've already witnessed/seen.

I'll read descriptions of gigantic beasts or underground worlds and my brain is like "stock image of dragon" "large cave you've been in once on holiday."

Can anyone relate? Is there anyone out there without aphantasia who can tell me whether you're actually able to see unknown worlds in your mind's eye or if I've got it all wrong?