Count me in for the movie in my mind group. I much prefer reading a book to seeing a TV show or movie most of the time. Until very recently (I'm almost 40 too) I never even thought to think about whether everyone felt this way about reading. I couldn't imagine why so many prefer to watch TV instead of read in the evenings. The most effective punishment as a child was being grounded from reading. Smart Alec that I can be, I did try to apply that to school assignment also... After 8 weeks (one marking period) of no pleasure reading I rarely made it to that level of discipline again.
A couple months ago, DS 11 had a book report due and was struggling to come up with how to draw a cartoon illustration of the main action of the book. I asked him questions and finally said draw what you saw in your mind when you read it!!! He looked at me very blankly and said that he couldn't write down the words. Now he reads very quickly and comprehension and detail are great. I never knew that he didn't see the book the way I do. Instead he can recreate the page in his mind for recall. It turns out that DH also was confused by the moview in my mind idea. Both DS and DH are math gifties although DS is actually pretty equal verbal and quantitative.
