Inspired by all the comments in the Harry Potter is Depressing thread about how at least it’s got people/children reading. And, even more incomprehensible to me, about it being good that it has pulled kids off the video games to read.
Simply put, i don’t get it. Why is reading so good for people or for kids especially? I mean don’t get me wrong i enjoy reading i spend most of my time reading, albeit far more on the internet than novels nowadays, but i don’t see why its a “better for you” type of entertainment to anything else kids are doing. I’ve always assumed it was just a sort of “books are old and old things are good for you” type of attitude but i hope there’s more too it then that.
I don’t see how reading Harry Potter, or anything else for that matter, is inherently better then watching a movie, playing a video game, listening to music, pursuing a craft, playing a sport, or anything else the kids are doing. Especially the video games since i always get the feeling that people seem to think reading is educational in some way no matter, or almost no matter, what you are reading. Whereas it seems to me you’re going to be learning, or at least thinking, far more from an average video game than you are from the average book. Not that i intend for this thread to be all Book vs. Video Games. I just want to know why people consider books to be good for you or whatever it is that creates comments like those i mentioned in the Potter thread.
If you read books by good authors, you learn good spelling, grammar and sentence structure. You also will expand your vocabulary so you’re not using the same words over and over in a conversation.
I’m sure someone will come along and put up better reasons that this, but I’ve always felt that being a big reader improves your vocabulary, and improves your spelling and grammar skills.
For example, knowing that the word “I” is always capitalized, even in the middle of a sentence.
You visit new worlds, get your imagination fired, and work your brain. Reading forces you to immerse yourself in the story, to picture the characters and scenes, and explore interaction. It will also help you discern what is good from what is popcorn from what is dreck. I have learned vocabulary, grammar, what constitutes good dialogue and descriptions and been inspired to write on my own.
To me, reading is as vital as breathing. I get twitchy when I’ve finished one book and have not yet decided on the next.
If practice makes perfect, reading would be one of those to be good to get down perfectly. As much as I like video games, reading is more useful in a normal life.
This doesn’t mean that stomping people out online in video games isn’t fun or there’s nothing to be gleaned from it.
For me reading is “better” because it stimulates your imagination moreso than other mediums in that the image of the scenes are not completely laid out for you. Radio shows are similar in that the visual images are not there and many details must be created from your own imagination. You can’t get that from a video game or a movie. All the details are laid out for you from someone else’s imagination.
Perhaps I’m a mutant, but I’ve never really got the imagination going when I read. It happens in a very seldom manner for me, and when it happens, for short distances. For example, I’ll read a sentence or two and be stuck with the figure of speech and have to ruminate for a couple minutes.
That’s why I tend to prefer movies to books. I’m interested in seeing someone’s vision, but I’m interested in seeing the vision of someone that has some kind of skills and training to actually convey that vision accurately to a viewer. Seeing someone else’s vision also has its own merits and rewards, though. Otherwise, the movie critic would be useless, and there wouldn’t be discussions on movies and such.
I agree with what others have said, but I think a big part is narrative. In movies or TV or video games, no matter what happens, even with a voice-over, you are still very limited.
You can see what the characters are doing or experiencing, but the author has no other means of relaying information that simply can’t be assumed from personal experience.
In a book the description of an event, a particular smell, the reeling of senses from vertigo, the frustrating cramping from a muscle spasm, can be relayed and understood from an interior perspective.
To say nothing of exploring the character’s thoughts and reactions in a most personal way as they have them.
Well, with some exceptions, the book is better than the movie. Even the wonderful Gone With the Wind movie truncated the book all to hell and back again. And the monster in *IT * by Stephen King was a whole lot scarier in my head than that silly CG spider the mini-series came up with.
That’s not to say I don’t enjoy seeing books made into good movies (Harry Potter is next on our list to go see) but on the other hand, I have been disappointed (I heard rumors there was a TNT mini-series of Mists of Avalon, but I don’t believe them. ;))
I hear this type of thing a lot from people who read fiction. I wish I could experience anything close to it, sounds like fun.
The main problem for me - and this is the same when I am watching a movie - is that I get jolted sharply back to reality when the characters behave in a manner that nobody facing the same situation in real life would ever behave.
Alice: “Yes! We’ve made it out of the house where the serial killer is hiding!”
Tom: “I’m going to go back inside!”
Alice: “Good idea! I’ll come!”
A good example of what I’m talking about is the Tomorrow series of books.
A group of Australian teenagers head in to the woods for a few days, they return and find their entire town is now deserted. Fair enough. I’m intrigued.
They soon discover that Australia has been invaded by a foreign power, all members of the town have been rounded up and put in an internment camp. No problem.
The teenagers start participating in guerilla warfare against the invaders. Ok… I can handle that.
Despite all of the other resistance fighters that these teenagers meet up with and interact with, despite all of the acts of geurilla warfare that they partake in against the invaders, at no stage do any of them ever wonder from which country the invaders are from, or why they have invaded?!
To me, that’s just bad writing. You can’t have things just happen. There has to be an explnation of who these people are, and why they do what they do. People don’t do things for no reason in real life, why would they in your story.
This assumes you know all possible ways people in real life will respond to a situation. In other words, you will be jolted back because the behavior doesn’t fit into your limited worldview.
And how do you get a better worldview? Well, you read, of course.
The example you gave is a straw man, BTW. If the characters go back into the house, it’s because they have sufficient reason at the time to do do – and they also don’t know that they’re in a book. In addition, though it may seem stupid (though to a careful reader, it’s not), people do stupid things.
Straggler: I thought they did know which country the invaders were from–eventually, at any rate, certainly by the end of the first book–and that it just didn’t say in the story. I really liked that series. That detail did bug me, but clearly Marsden didn’t want to tick anyone off. I never thought the kids themselves didn’t know.
OK. So. Books are better because they make your brain work far harder than most visual media does. OK, a Danielle Steele novel doesn’t demand much, but a “real” book makes you think. A novel immerses you not only in another world, but in another mind, and it doesn’t give you much help in constructing that in your head; you have to do it yourself. A logical argument set down in print is far more detailed and thorough than just about any news segment or documentary; you have to think through it more deeply. Print generally demands more from your mind.
At risk of stating the obvious: This is because you DON’T READ ENOUGH BOOKS. If you read more, you cease to get stuck on figures of speech. You have just made yourself, effectively, the attempted counterexample that proves the point.
Also, Straggler: Why do you assert that reading nonfiction doesn’t engage the imagination? Sure, if it’s a textbook, maybe not, but true crime? biographies? Anything that has characters that go places and do things requires you to use your imagination when you read. It doesn’t matter if it’s little green men on mars, halflings in The Shire, or Thomas Jefferson at the signing of the Declaration of Independance. In order to follow the book, you’ll need to imagine.
Plus, I second the comment that, if the book has gaping logic holes, that’s a problem with the book and not the genre. I suggest you not read Harry Potter, but you might try, oh, Master and Commander.
