# Books or Films?



## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

What do you like more? Books (fiction) or movies?

Personally, I don't really care that much for movies, I cannot connect as much because usually the acting has to be impeccable to involve me. But I like some movies, ones which are well made and with human stories. I particularly dislike over-technologised action/thriller and animated movies.

What do you like?


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## Sonata (Aug 7, 2010)

there's not been a day in my life where I would select movies over books in this poll. I've been a bookwork from day one :tiphat:


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

The best films cannot do what an average book can do. The characters are more developed, the story is more complex, and a book allows you to use your imagination.

Books all the way!


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

You can never get from a movie the same detail, storytelling skill, character development etc. that a book would have. Also I just find it more enjoyable reading a book, it seems more engaging. I can take my time with a book, the narrative doesn't move too quickly like it would in a movie.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

I prefer movies to books. Books can be quite long.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

One medium is never the other, and there are great things within each medium.

I suppose what is meant is "Do you prefer to read or more prefer watching movies?

The results of answers to this question may reveal that some are of the dumbed down or lazier culture who likes their entertainments more passive than interactive.

I read, in spates, but a fair amount: I also love a fair number of films, though with films, there are hardly any current mainstream films I would want to even pay one penny to watch, let alone spend the time to watch them.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Books, if I had to choose--but I'll take great art where I can find it, and that's on film at least as often as anywhere else these days as far as I'm concerned. 

Although there are many things films can't do as well as books can, they can do many things books can't do at all.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Books for me too, but with some reservations. 

The current state of the publishing industry is in shambles. I don't think anyone is writing on the level of 40 or 50 years ago. It's as if editors no longer exist and any old rambling self indulgent verbal ejaculation gets published. And now with easily self published e-books, it's even worse. I miss the times when printing was expensive and publishers had to be more selective, even in the more popular genre categories. Good thing there is still plenty of books from long ago that are new to me. And re-reading is always rewarding. If only I could stay awake these days . . .

However this same principle works the opposite for movies. They are so expensive to make no one wants to risk anything creative or new, hence all these awful remakes that are no better and usually much worse than the originals.

Grumpiness aside, I am glad to enjoy both when the mood strikes.


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## Guest (Nov 10, 2013)

I much prefer to watch films. I find they are better company.

Reading reviews of _Gravity_, which I saw at the cinema last night, and the question about which of books and films I like more, I can see that some want films to do the same as books. As Blancrocher suggests, they aren't the same medium, and they can therefore achieve different things, even though they have much in common. I think the difference between them is critical.

_Gravity _is a perfect example of what the best use of cinema can do that books can't: they can simulate a physical environment that generates a physical response. Let's be clear: books can undoubtedly move you - stimulate emotions of sadness, fear and anger - and they can draw your imagination into their world. What they can't do is to simulate the sensation of being physically surrounded by space as is done in _Gravity _to the extent that you respond physically to the sense of disorientation, loneliness, suffocation.

It's the sheer physicality of some cinema that sets it above the run of the mill movies that mostly replicate the mere story-telling of books. And although I watched _Gravity _in 3D, which certainly aids the process of simulation, the same effect can be achieved in 2D by the plain effect of being put in close proximity to another human being that you can see and hear. To read about a character in a book in a painful situation can, of course, induce complete empathy in the reader, provided that the author has convincingly created that character in your imagination. But to be up close to a 'real' being, whose eyes you can see and whose expression you can measure makes it a much more physical experience.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Beautiful post, MacLeod. Shame it wasn't a movie.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> I much prefer to watch films. I find they are better company.
> 
> Reading reviews of _Gravity_, which I saw at the cinema last night, and the question about which of books and films I like more, I can see that some want films to do the same as books. As Blancrocher suggests, they aren't the same medium, and they can therefore achieve different things, even though they have much in common. I think the difference between them is critical.
> 
> ...


Yep, a book can not give you a close up to read a facial expression, the face on the big screen forty feet across. Nothing like it, but for me, as much there is nothing like the mind movies books make happen as well.

I would be much more horrified if somehow I could never be allowed to read a book again, but was left movies -- the opposite can / can't is just a little less horrifying to contemplate.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

People have been writing for ages, but they have only been making films for a little over a century. Books necessarily have individuals behind them, while many films are made on a corporate level in which the individual is purposely obscured. Books also feature more variation, for now. Given these facts, it is impossible for me to state earnestly that I value movies above books, but I certainly enjoy both mediums a lot. Films have their advantages, including their brevity and directness; and I hardly read modern books, but I still watch very modern films regularly, even if they are the ones explicitly produced outside the ever-infamous Hollywood. I also prefer bad movies over bad books, because at least in bad movies there are a great variety of people doing different things, all of which can be appreciated individually. Furthermore, if the force behind a story lies in its narrative, the personality of the characters and the tension - and not the ideas that lie behind it or the _evaluation_ of the characters - there is a big chance it will be more effective on screen: Joyce on screen doesn't work (they've tried!), while science-fiction hugely benefits from it. But, if we move to truly first-rate artistry, I must admit there are simply vastly fewer exemplars of it in film than in book form. Far fewer geniuses have worked as filmmakers than have been authors - and how could it be otherwise, given how long writing has been around? It's an unfair match.

Nevertheless I myself would gladly sacrifice a Virginia Woolf, W.S Maugham or Jane Austen or two for an Ozu or Ford, and when I have an hour or two and wish to indulge in some entertainment, it is often the movies I flee to. So, who knows?


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Celloman said:


> book allows you to use your imagination.


That's what teachers tell kids in school to encourage them to read anything and make them feel that answering that book is always better than the movie is obligatory.

I think there is no answer for this question without specification what book and what movie we're talking about. There are many movies that I believe to surpass their literary basis in many ways (Sergei Bondarchuk's _War and Peace_ or Ridley Scott's _Duelists_, for example).


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

I doubt a film can reproduce the experience of reading, say, a Borges short-story.
But I also doubt a book can reproduce the experience of watching, say, a film like 2001: A Space Odyssey.
So I prefer to stay away from this false dichotomy.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Weston said:


> The current state of the publishing industry is in shambles. I don't think anyone is writing on the level of 40 or 50 years ago. It's as if editors no longer exist and any old rambling self indulgent verbal ejaculation gets published. And now with easily self published e-books, it's even worse. I miss the times when printing was expensive and publishers had to be more selective, even in the more popular genre categories. Good thing there is still plenty of books from long ago that are new to me. And re-reading is always rewarding. If only I could stay awake these days . . .


People have been complaining about too many books being published roughly since the invention of the printing press! :lol: However, I don't think we should assume that because so many bad books are being published, that it's easy to get good ones published. As the economics for publishing becomes more precarious, publishing houses tend to become more conservative (even as they publish a lot of titles).

The subject of ebooks and online publication is interesting, and I personally don't know what the ramifications of spotify-like literature services would be--but I'm interested to find out!

To end on a dour note, here's a pretty good essay by David Denby about why movies are going to hell!

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/107212/has-hollywood-murdered-the-movies


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## Guest (Nov 10, 2013)

Aramis said:


> I think there is no answer for this question without specification what book and what movie we're talking about. There are many movies that I believe to surpass their literary basis in many ways (Sergei Bondarchuk's _War and Peace_ or Ridley Scott's _Duelists_, for example).





aleazk said:


> I doubt a film can reproduce the experience of reading, say, a Borges short-story.
> But I also doubt a book can reproduce the experience of watching, say, a film like 2001: A Space Odyssey.
> So I prefer to stay away from this false dichotomy.


But the question was, "What do you like more?" not, "Which is better, greater, more worthy?" No-one needs to fret about comparing book with film, just about stating which activity you prefer. The 'worth' of the books and the films is irrelevant too.

I like to read. I have read plenty, though not as much of the worthy literature as someone with a degree in English Literature should have done.

I just prefer to watch movies.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

MacLeod said:


> But the question was, "What do you like more?" not, "Which is better, greater, more worthy?" No-one needs to fret about comparing book with film, just about stating which activity you prefer. The 'worth' of the books and the films is irrelevant too.
> 
> I like to read. I have read plenty, though not as much of the worthy literature as someone with a degree in English Literature should have done.
> 
> I just prefer to watch movies.


I abstain from my right to vote then!.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I voted for books over films, because a really good book becomes part of my life more than a good film. But it's a near thing. These days I watch TV, films & videos more readily than books. It's the laziness of age plus discovering the computer (especially this place!) plus my relatively recent passion for my violin and classical music. But I remember going through phases of non-reading before - when Taggart & I were first married - moving house - family illness - and so I think it's only a matter of time before I become a bookworm again.

I quite agree it isn't about 'worthiness'. I love an engrossing light read. Some years ago I came across a historical novel on the same subject as 'St Ives' by RLS - French prisoners of war in Napoleonic times. It was called 'Monsieur Raoul' by D.K.Broster and was hopelessly romantic. I read it five times in a row & one of the first things I did when I retired was to get Taggart to order me a second-hand copy from Amazon.

Hmmm - that's given me an idea!


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

aleazk said:


> I abstain from my right to vote then!.


I worry that if people abstain from voting like this, the poll will cease to be an objective gauge of the relative merits of films and books. In any case, I just voted for films because I'm sorry to see they're losing so pitifully.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Just after I'd pressed the 'post' button for my post above, my computer went wonky, and I could only get parts of internet pages. I went away & fiddled moodily for a while, and when I came back, all was okay, and my post was actually up there.

But I felt utterly bereft when Computer let me down, and it made me think - if your electric equipment goes haywire, you're up a creek without a paddle, but short of dropping the book in the bath, you will still have something to engross & enthrall you.

So yep - let's hear it for *books*!


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I wouldn't continue to provoke your computer like this if I were you, Ingélou!


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

On the one hand, I do enjoy films as a sort of total-art-work, and some of them can be very moving. On the other hand, I think you can get more involved in a book. A truly thrilling book, with well-worked plot and characterisation, can dominate the reader's life for the period of however many weeks it takes to be read!!

A further point I would make is that we have 3000 years of books at our disposal compared to about 100 years of films. If you are a fan of ancient literature, as I am, reading a book from far in the past can transport you to another period in time. This is a thrill which I can't get from films.


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## AClockworkOrange (May 24, 2012)

I love both but generally I prefer books.

Books allow for more personal interpretation and the special effects are always better 

Different media for different times and moods.

Personally, I'd rather switch the "or" to an "and" and drop the question mark but in the spirit of the poll I had to give the edge to books.


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

Blancrocher said:


> In any case, I just voted for films because I'm sorry to see they're losing so pitifully.


I'm not in the least bit sorry that they're losing. They're completely in the wrong!


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

I laugh at loud when I read books, and occasionally choke up. This is about the same when I watch movies. But then again, I love the books I read more than the movies I've watched, for the most part. However, I've never actually cried from reading a book, and I have from seeing a film, well, a drama series Season Finale. Books bring out the positive responses in me lol:/), and films the negative responses eek:/ :'( ).


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