Here’s the thing: books are great. Not everyone will agree with me, but they are. They transport you to new worlds, teach you new things, and make you emotional (depending on the book). But they do sometimes take awhile to get through.
Movies, on the other hand, are action packed and visually stimulating. They are over in three hours or less, so if you have a hard time focusing, movies make more sense. But movies don’t always tell you everything the way it should be. For instance, in My Sister’s Keeper, the movie adaption kills the wrong person. The whole point of Jodi Picoult’s book is to blow your mind, and the movie doesn’t have the same effect .
I’m a fan of the Harry Potter franchise, both films and the books, but the movies didn’t explain some important history as told in the books. Because movies are shorter, they can’t possibly give you all of the information that made the books so special. Books allow you to use your imagination and create your own movie. You can imagine what the characters look like, what the world looks like and how the characters interact.
With books, you know everything (at least books written in third person) that the characters are thinking and doing. You can get into their minds and know why they are the way they are. You are constantly surprised by plot twists because there is no music to make you anxious.
You want to know another reason why books are most often always better? Movies are often adapted from books. This year’s Oscar nominees for Best Picture included five films that began as books: Life of Pi, Lincoln, Argo, Silver Linings Playbook and Les Misérables.
Did you know that Shawshank Redemption, Die Hard and Fast Times at Ridgemont High were all adapted from books as well?
How about that the beloved 10 Things I Hate About You and She’s The Man were both adapted from Shakespeare?
And finally, you can take books everywhere.
Movies are brilliant ways of entertainment, but books allow you to think for yourself and use your imagination. Take a chance and read a book before the movie. You never know how much more you might like the book until you give it a try.
Photo courtesy of silverliningsplaybookmovie.com
