I agree with the message, but the commercial could be better honestly. As for those saying movies are superior: you can never have in a movie the level of detail that books have. This is why many movies, which are inspired by great books, suck...

I used to say I loved reading. Much later, I realized it wasn't the reading itself that I loved, but the interesting stories regardless the format. I don't care if it's a book, a comic, a TV series, a videogame... if the story is good, I'm in.

This is also why I dislike movies in general: you can hardly put a decent plot on a couple hours of video.

Agreed.

I'm happy that our youths hate to read, it means more books for those of us that love to read. The only downfall to that is eink displays will die a horrible death and I will be stuck reading on an eye-searing tablet. Reading in dead-tree format is a no go for me, as having to carry around heavy books everywhere is a PITA.

Not to prolong something which has obviously been resolved, but I can see both sides of the argument. I did not start reading books until I was 15, that is with any interest past school made me do it. An element of this was what I would call "book people," people that, you know, just read books and looked down on others who had no interest in them. I still don't do a lot of reading, the reading I do is not a much and generally sparring, but when I do it tends to be a serious project. Now, we get into the fact that even amongst book people, there is a certain elitism (some justified). That is to say, George R. R. Martin fans sometimes rip on older fantasy and older literature because it's not as "dark" or "realistic" and that pisses me off (I usually don't use crude language here, sorry). The first book I attempted to read was a poetic translation of the Iliad, people that like modern stuff don't generally like that, although there are plenty that do. In this way, I and some others look down on mainstream, popular, and the not too intelligent things out there (not necessarily Martin, never read any Martin and frankly the fan base keeps me away; I'm talking more like Divergent. which we saw a booth at a store for it and opened it up out of curiosity and found it funnily bad, then I saw it was going to be a movie...). It wasn't on purpose, but it is what it is.

To the point of movies, motion pictures are, of all mediums, the most carefully researched, marketed, and formulated to be successful. They cost a ton of money, this is natural. That being said, sometimes i find it to be the better medium. I couldn't "get" Heart of Darkness, but I could get Apocalypse Now. Not for the previous example, but prose rarely does combat scenes justice. Reading an account of a firefight, or a sword fight can easily be down right boring. Not that everything should keep me gratuitously entertained with thrills and chills, but Icelandic Sagas knew how boring being told the blow by blow of a fight could be and pragmatically told you what you need to know, movies have the natural advantage of being able to see everything that gos on and that allows the action (as in, the verb sense, not just gunfights) to be less mundane.

Anyway, that's to say that there are benefits (mentally, development wise) to reading, that any medium can be done well, that other mediums do other things and stories better, and as Seitokai no Ichizon says, different mediums require different approaches. Yet again, not to prolong an obviously done deal, I just wanted to give slightly more both sides story. And, if I read, it's a book because I like to actually own my books, and reading on electronic devices gives me a headache. And, it's not like kids don't like to read, they just commonly like to read what they're told is popular.

(Man, that's a long post. Sorry)
(For what it's worth, monkey, I get similar looks when a) I didn't read much, and still don't really, and b) when you read something not popular/mainstream. Not saying everyone that reads is like this, just I've met all of like three people who like what I do. And one's my brother, the other my friend anyway, and the other the only girl in school who knows what honest to God Irish mythology is)
(This just keeps getting longer and longer. I know I rip on Martin fans a lot, I did in another thread too, and I apologize fro making it seem like they're representative of the fan base, but these kind are the ones with whom I've interacted and I just want to clarify that there is nothing wrong with Martin or his fans and that all fan bases have their dreck.)

(If anyone was wondering, the above edit said "girls" and it should have been girl. I maintain old posts too much.)

There are elitist cultures in every thing. Just look at the Shakespeare snobs. Elitist bastards would not stop me from reading any story. I really like GRRM's books, but it's not for everybody, and I still like to read older literature even the less dark and realistic. I do prefer the darker books, Edgar Allan Poe being one of my classic "dark" favorites.
Have you tried reading on an eink device: Kindle or Nook. I have a hard time reading on a tablet or even my phone as I get headaches and eyestrain quickly from LCD's, but the eink display is great to read on. I can read for hours on my kindle, but give me a tablet or phone and it's no more than 15 minutes before I have to call it quits.

Indeed, and I concur with your point, it does serve as deterrent to those of they who would otherwise have an interest in certain things. Should not stop anyone from getting into something, and you pointed out correctly all cultures and subcultures have elitism. Like I said in the edit, I don't mean to come across as harshly as I may have to Martin fans and him, he's just really popular right now. And it's good to hear someone is unencumbered by something's age to enjoy it.


On your kindle comment, part of it is light and screen brightness and the other part is I don't like messing with electronic mediums when reading. Considering I respect your opinion, however, I'll think about it.

A book you can take time to explain and clearly articulate something. In a movie or videogame it is not uncommon for people to miss a point or idea the director or writer thought a lot of people would get.. It's part of the reason why we have college text books and not college video shows.

Now to be clear, a picture can be worth far more than a thousand words. How? Let me give an example; I own a car that never saw commercial sales to the public, It was only sold to companies. When I went to look for a repair manual, I could not find one. I ended up buying a shop manual that has tons of exploded views of the vehicle. If someone tried to describe the exploded views in text form it would probably take 9 phone books worth of pages and not be very clear.

Movies are a bit limited on the amount of story they can tell. Most try to keep under 2 hours and there is only so much plot you can fit in before the audience attention span is tested. TV shows are better to fill in a lot of small details but are still under a time constraint so each episode has some sort of conclusion even if it's a cliffhanger. So plots aren't too complicated even for tv.

Well I prefer books to videos since they tell you a lot more. They can express the feelings and thoughts better since videos are always limited by time where as books aren't limited by pages - just look at 1000 pages books from George R.R. Martin or Tolkien for example - they are really superb classics. Example Eragon book 1 extremely good book - movie extremely mediocre since it was limited to 1,5h length instead of 3 hours needed for showing the story of this book.

Myself I read at least one book per week on my Cybook Opus reader and I do buy them cheaply at Storybundle sales or Humble bundle sales or at the german www.beam-ebooks.de (drm-free) store. The movies really cant give you what the books can but its true that book reading is not for impatient people.

Great stuff, thanks you for sharing!

http://www.viralnova.com/librarian-photos

I totally agree. I'm an elementary reading teacher and it disturbs me that these kids have access to so much literature and chose to ignore it all. (With a few exceptions)

While you're bothered by those thinking that other (entertainment) media are inferior to books, you don't seem to abstain from this practice yourself (only into the opposite direction).

There is no comparison to be made between books, motion films, video games, etc. Each one offers a unique, personal experience (that the others can't offer), the value of which is highly subjective. One can enjoy all of them, but prefer one over others because they value more the experience one particular medium offers them.

Coming from a country so incredibly steeped in literature from its folklore to Beckett, Yeats, Joyce to more modern writers like Seamus Heaney, our neighbours in Britain having the likes of Monmouth, Shakespeare, Dickens, the Bronte's etc. I feel so privileged that I had the means to be immersed in their words from an early age. Who needs movies when you have somebody like Shakespeare to tell you stories that cover so many facets of human life.

If you never travelled, you could always read books like Slow Boats to China, or some of Thor Heyerdahl's works. You could be sitting in a prison doing a life sentence for something, but your mind can be transported instantly to somewhere else, be it Middle Earth, Ancient Japan or even another galaxy far far away (tm).

Books stimulate the mind, make you use your imagination as opposed to watching a movie which is a vision of someone else's imagination.