are books better at tell a story?

Yes

Yes.

Yes, because they let you make up what everything looks and sounds like as you go along. Movies do that part for you and it takes a lot of the fun out of it.

YES.

Are books better than movies?
Depends.

My cat's breath smells like cat food.

Original works are typically better than adaptations.

I personally prefer books to movies as movies are typically too short for me to be emotionally invested in them, however I do like a good boom fest movie when I don't feel like thinking.

I do think sometimes having pictures of something that's being described, or perhaps a picture of main characters dressed up would be nice... I often start to forget the color of their hair or how long it was...

And of course names... I had so much trouble reading back in 2004 the Lord of the Rings books, as you have Sauron and Saruman, names so closely lettered that i didn't know which was which... still don't... On the other hand Denethor was depicted as much more of a jerk and prick in the movie while in the book i remember specifically thinking he actually was rather smart and well informed, but i can't remember exactly the differences between the film/book.


It depends on the books though. I'm thinking back to the Harry Potter books, which explicitly excluded details so as to not accidentally hint or reveal something later that would have been fairly obvious if say for example, you saw what they were wearing at the time... (Although i don't have any exact examples of that right at this moment).

Worse in the third movie the entire dialog and plot was blatantly and quickly force-fed to you to explain what was going on with time travel...

What do you want for?

Story / World building / Lore or Set Pieces?

Depends on the book/movie.
Your imagination powered by a well written book lets yourself immerse into a story.
In a good movie you can see new aspects of a story.
If you've read the book and then watch the movie and expect an accurate reproduction, you will usually disappointed.
Take for example Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. I've read the book long before the movie and i liked it.
The movie just takes some aspects from the book otherwise its complete different, still its a masterpiece.
They (books/movies) are just too different media.

Yes

Movies of books are way for lazy people not to read :D

It really depends. If the movie was made from a book, the book is generally better. If the book was written based on the movie, then the movie is usually better. :)

Books are good at fluffs. Movies are good at (said) sensual stimulation..

Objectively? I dunno. Movies are only a couple of hours long. That’s not much time to get invested, but a contained experience like that can sometimes be preferable to books. Example? Lord of the Rings isn’t a great series of novels. No I’m not kidding. As a fantasy bible it’s amazing, but from a storytelling perspective it’s painfully slow, waffling on for eons about the most mundane stuff till you can recognize the taste, sight, and sound of every single molecule of Middle Earth.

Likewise The Game of Thrones TV show (we’re branching out here) eliminates the time factor and takes the opportunity to add visual and audio enhancements like Ned’s ‘nam flashbacks. And the thing about books is you get to hear the character’s innermost thoughts, which sounds great, until you realize some of those characters are teenagers.

Aha! Anyway, thought I’d throw that out there considering how one-sided these threads tend to get. The moment a word is printed on a piece of paper you’d think it was untouchable the way people carry on.

And if you read a lot, it can help you with language skills!