Everyone has an opinion. Some think books are better than movies and just as many people say the opposite. I find it hard to pick a side because I love both books and movies. Each type of storytelling has good and bad things about it. They each capture my attention and my adoration. When I find a book or movie that I love, I find it very hard to stop reading, stop watching, or stop thinking about it.
Everyone knows that reading is a good way to develop vocabulary and increase your creativity. For me reading a book is much more than that. When I find a book that I love, it captures my imagination; I think about that book every second, whether I’m reading it right then or if I finally put it down.
To get lost in a book is to enter another world; a world created in your imagination full of characters you come to love. Reading can be a slow leisurely walk through a first romance, or it can be an exciting adventure full of intrigue and danger. Reading a book is to open a world of opportunities where you can be whatever you want and go wherever you dream.
Movies, on the other hand, are just the opposite. With movies you are watching a story unfold. Within the first minutes of a movie, you find that character you love and the one you love to hate. You laugh with the actors and hold your breath to keep from screaming aloud. Every second you relish in the moment, never wanting it to end. The last seconds you hang on the edge of your seat hoping for a good outcome.
Instead of imagining a world on your own, you watch it come to life. In your mind a person’s face may be hazy and without detail, but in a movie all that detail you forgot and all the things you struggled to imagine become unbelievably real.
When I finish a movie, I remain in that world. I think about the characters and about what did or didn’t happen to them. With a movie it’s easy to live in that world again and again until you catch yourself silently saying the lines word-for-word with the actors.
Whatever your position on this debate, I encourage anyone to expand their imagination. Read a book about a far off land or watch that world come to life on screen. Whatever you do, I challenge you to enjoy yourself as much as I do and to get lost in a different world even if it’s only for a second.