Picture this: You’re on vacation, sitting down in a nice comfy hammock in Mexico, enjoying the sun and reading a nice book, let’s say, the hunger games or even harry potter. Sounds great doesn’t it? Well for some, they would rather be sitting inside a dark theater watching the movie adaption of that great book. As someone who liked to read and is aspiring to be an English teacher I can proudly say that I would rather read a book than see the Hollywood movie version of it. Why? Well let me explain to you the perks of reading a book over watching a movie.



Firstly, there is nothing more gratifying than getting that nice new book and opening it up and smelling it for the first time. It always has that nice fresh papery-book smell and it’s all stiff and ready to be cracked open and read. Getting a book to me is like a kid getting a brand new toy. At first it’s hard to get into and play with (or in my case read) but once you get into it and start playing with it (or well, reading it) it’s impossible to put down. When you watch a movie, that’s it, 2 hours of your life that you just spent watching people act out a book.


When you read a book, you get into it, you start to picture what it would actually look like in your head. You imagination spikes all these wild ideas of what the characters look like and how they feel and smell and act. You imagine a voice for them and an attitude. When you watch a movie, all of that is already decided by which actor was chosen and how the director perceives the story. Yes you see them and hear then but you can’t really FEEL them. You can’t get inside their head and feel what they’re feeling. When you watch a movie, you are basically watching it how the director imagined it, and yes of course the writer of the book is usually there to give them a bit of guidance as to how she or he meant it to be, but where is the fun in watching someone else’s imagination in picture when you can think of your own.


As someone who read the Harry Potters, The Hunger Games, and yes, I even read Twilight (like most girls my age did when they were like 11), I can proudly say that I always prefer the book over the movie. As much fun as it was to watch Katniss actually play the Hunger Games, and to watch Bella fall in love with Edward, I still can’t but think about how I used to see them in my mind, and how I used to hear and feel them before I watched the movie adaptations of them.


If anyone has read the book Holes, and watched the movie, I’m sure you’re with me when I say that there are so many inconsistencies between the two it’s actually painful for me to watch the movie. I get that Shia LaBeouf was the actor they wanted but when the book says that Stanley is overweight, you can’t cast someone who is clearly not.


The moment when you finally finish a book is amazing. It’s like, you just spend, a week, a month, a year even who knows, reading a book, this amazing piece of literature that someone had the brains to create and put out there for everyone to see and read. You feel complete. You feel finished. Watching a movie is like, wow okay flashing lights, hot actor. Oh it’s over here are the credits. When I leave a movie I don’t feel that same gratification that I feel after I’ve read a book.


My point isn’t to diminish the value of movies but more to increase the appreciation of books. Somebody, somewhere, thought up all these amazing ideas and put them to pen and paper and wrote a book to share with the world. And yes yes I know a director and a script writer also put pen to paper and wrote something but when they are just following someone else’s ideas, it’s not the same.


To those people who say “Oh I’ll just wait for the movie” please, pick up the book, try reading it, if you don’t like it, okay it’s not for everyone, but at least try before shutting it down. It would probably take longer for the next movie in the series to come out than it would for you to just go and read the books to find out what happens.


Books are amazing things, and everyone should at least try and read a book before declaring it a waste of time and going to the theater to watch the movie version.


 


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