# Why are books inherently better? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 20, 2009, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-books-inherently-better/503599 "2009-07-20T06:33:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Trepa\_Mayfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Trepa\_Mayfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trepa_Mayfield)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2009, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-books-inherently-better/503599/1 "2009-07-20T06:33:44Z")
Inspired by this thread: [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=524932](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=524932) And by inherently better, I mean better than reading magazines, graphic novels, websites, etc. The general superiority thoughts about reading, I’ve noticed, don’t carry over when the person is reading something other than a full book. But why? If someone can tell a story better using images to help the process, why is it ‘worse’ than if he had made it into a book? If the same information is in a magazine and a textbook, why is the magazine ‘worse’? And if I have the exact same book digitized and on paper, why do people frown on me for reading it on the computer but not on the couch? ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2009, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-books-inherently-better/503599/2 "2009-07-20T08:15:58Z")
Books aren’t inherently _better_, but you’re unlikely to find as much information crammed into a magazine, comic, website, or anywhere else as in a book. A graphic novel may contain oodles of information about what things look like and what they move like, but most books won’t spend as much ink and paper on meaningless detail as any but a handful of graphic novels. I can’t say why anyone would look down on reading an electronic version of a book, but as for the rest, well, books are longer. That, in itself, shows greater dedication to reading – reading itself is well defended in that other thread. In fact, choosing a magazine, etc., over a book frequently indicates distaste or impatience with the longer road. That said, certainly there are books that are poorly written, or contain little of use; certainly there are magazines that condense everything you want to know about a given subject (news, usually); and certainly there are graphic novels so rich in symbolism that they convey all the meaning of a book with a hundred times as many words. But as the apostle said, “the race is not always to the swift – but that’s the way to bet.” ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2009, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-books-inherently-better/503599/3 "2009-07-20T09:08:47Z")
It’s better to read a book than to read a computer screen because you’ll absorb more of the information from the book. This is an established fact backed by a lot of research; [Mark Bauerline’s book _The Dumbest Generation_](http://www.amazon.com/Dumbest-Generation-Stupefies-Americans-Jeopardizes/dp/1585426393) has an excellent chapter on this. There’s another problem with computer screens: they’re usually connected to the internet. Hence anyone who’s reading on them may be distracted by advertising or links. With a printed book, at least there no rival text _on the page itself_ trying to draw your attention away. As for comparing books to magazines, comic books (I refuse to say “graphic novel”), I agree there’s no inherent advantage to books. It’s just that most of humanity’s wisdom is in book form. Aristotle didn’t write for _Athens Weekly_. Shakespeare never released _Hamlet_ as a comic book. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2009, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-books-inherently-better/503599/4 "2009-07-20T09:40:47Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > As for comparing books to magazines, comic books (I refuse to say “graphic novel”), I agree there’s no inherent advantage to books. It’s just that most of humanity’s wisdom is in book form. Aristotle didn’t write for _Athens Weekly_. Shakespeare never released _Hamlet_ as a comic book. No, but he did release Hamlet as a soap opera performed live onstage… it was written as a play to entertain people. it never was written to have deep inner meaning other than how much money can we get. It certainly wasn’t considered important literature at that time. The fact that he doesnt dumb down the entertainment sort of indicates that he thought that people could actually understand the words and word images he used. People may have been illiterate, but they did communicate very involved information verbally, and retain information from verbal sources.