On this kind of snobbery, I’ve got you beat. I actually bought a TV last fall so I could watch movies while I walked on my treadmill. It still isn’t completely hooked up. But it will be soon. Treadmill time is approaching.
I haven’t willingly shared a house with a TV since I graduated from college 25 years ago.
Two hundred years ago novels were scorned by snobs. If they anticipated the miracle of drama being beamed into the home, they might consider it a step up for the lower classes.
/pedant
I love to read, but it would be absurd to set goals like this for myself nowadays. I’m simply so busy all the time. I mean, back when I was single I could expect to have a good deal of free time in which to spend reading. But now I have a wife and baby so I spend lots of evenings playing with my son and doing housework, and have maybe ten minutes to myself before going to sleep.
She wasn’t much of a reader, from what I gathered. But her cancer cells changed the scientific world. Good book – recommend.
The last book I read strictly because “everyone was reading it” was The Bridges of Madison County. Whoever edited that should have been taken out back and shot.
Googled it. The book does sound interesting. I read about as much nonfiction as fiction. Weird trifecta, though: Asimov, Irving and [biographer of Henrietta Lacks]. Well, maybe it’s a consolation to our thread starter that the first two are among my favorite writers, that I read a lot of nonfiction, and that I also read (and write, and publish) children’s books.
Instead of so warm and supportive, like the rest of us …
Of all the things on this board, supporting reading gets up your nose?
Okay, one more time.
NO, the book is NOT alway better than the the movie!. I read the Horatio Hornblower stories while watching this series; it was the final death knell for books versus film snobbery for me. A good film can get the same point across with as much artistry in one second as a book can in half a page. We are visual as well as verbal.
Okay, the book is usually better than the tv show.
Right now, I’m reading a Star Wars novel, but I’m also reading a book about the history of Kosovo. Does that meet the OP’s approval?
I never said it was.
In the case of suspense stories, watch the movie first because the other way around can remove some great suspense scenes. *The Hunt for Red October *comes to mind.
Do you suppose the “non book readers” don’t read them because - due to whatever way their brain processes information - it doesn’t offer them the emotional payback that something else might do, like good food, or something more visual (tv, movie, artwork) might?
I believe there are several ways in which the mind is supposed to process information. I know, for example, that I think best in words. Not everyone does. (eg, some folk process their thoughts visually (perhaps painters?), others are spatial thinkers, I cannot articulate their interpretation, as I simply “don’t think that way”, but have talked with friends who do.) The concept of different ways of thinking makes sense to me when “getting” why some folk don’t read (books).
I think it comes down to emotional satisfaction. Some folk don’t get it from words.
Hope this thought wasn’t too abstract to the point of the thread. 
No, the attitude that we are somehow better than the unwashed masses because we do (and the implication that they don’t). It is elitism in a forum that doesn’t deserve it. I have always hated the “aren’t we so special” mentality here. Quite simply, we are not.
The other thread that I mentioned:
Sounds like typical ivory tower “we’re not all that special” elitism to me.
Speak for yourselves. I personally am quite special.
Sorry to be ignorant, butI don’t understand this 
Are you mocking amanset for mocking this thread, or are you agreeing with him?
Well, there’s no way to win that one.
Well if you have to ask… 
No, you didn’t, that’s true. It’s one of my special snobberies.
That’s not true. I really love books - I don’t even own a Kindle - but that doesn’t blind me to the beauty & effectiveness of a good film. I get very annoyed when people like me say “the book is always better.”
Back in my day, we were.
I love Trixie Belden! (Especially the original six books by Julie Campbell.) Have you read any of the Judy Bolton books, by Margaret Sutton?
I’ll read just about anything. Last two books I finished were kids’ books, the 1965 and 1977 winners of the Carnegie Medal; the last two books before those were 1632 and 1633 (both rereads), by Eric Flint. Other recent books include the latest mystery by Donna Andrews, SF by Stirling, Clarke and Piper, and a book about mediaeval Europe.
Overall, my favourites in fiction are SF (Heinlein, Anderson, Norton, Piper, Chandler, Stirling, McCaffrey, &c)* and mysteries (Davis, Andrews, Stout, Shannon, Tapply, &c). But anything goes. And I have no problems with reading YA (loved The Hunger Games and the first sequel, but haven’t read the third one yet) or even children’s books (Arthur Ransome is still one of my favourite authors). In fact, for me the literary version of “comfort food” is going back to reread books I first read when I was a kid - Ransome, Marshall, Enright, Cleary, Boston…
Harry Potter?
Asimov?
John Irving?
Chick-lit?
Euh, I hate to bring this to you, but by my old english teachers standard you are illiterate.
I don’t even remember who wrote the Trixie Belden books; I only know that I really wanted to be her! I’ve not read the other authors but I was a voracious Enid Blyton reader (Famous Five, Secret Seven) reader as a child. I really like Asimov’s non[-fiction as well and I do like alternate universe SF (Conquistador for instance), just get so disappointed at all the Fantasy which is on the SF shelves lately.
Judging by your “joined date”, I’ve been here three years longer than you.