Books. In elementary school I’d always have a book open on my lap, under my desk. Sometimes the teacher would notice and I remember one time, in maybe third grade, getting in trouble for it. It was during reading class, and I was so frustrated trying to explain that I’d already read the book for class, so I should be able to read on my own during class.
Come to think of it, are we counting book we’ve read for school? Because that shifts the balance even more in favor of books by several hundred.
Books, 10 - 50 to 1. Among other reasons, movies take a 90 minute consecutive chunk of time, while books can be read in ten minute snippets if necessary.
I would say it is almost a tie. I think at best, movies win out just because my old job had a television with HBO and I worked night shift, so I would watch a movie around midnight every night.
I’m sure I’ve read far more books than I’ve seen movies, but there was about a 5-year period (maybe 1994-99) during which the ratio was inverted, and I satisfied my reading needs with magazines and web-surfing.
Sadly, over my lifetime, way more movies. But in recent years I have been reading a great deal. The balance has shifted and I now read far more than I watch movies. But I’ll have to live a long time to make up the reading deficit.
Wow, I’m astounded by how many people are saying “books by far”. Even for an avid reader, how long does it take you to read a book? You can watch a movie in 1.5-2.5 hours.
I’ve got 526 movies rated on Netflix, so I’ve seen at least that many (and I know I haven’t read nearly 526 books). But I’m a bit of a cinephile.
Easily and without a doubt I have read more books than seen movies. I read constantly. I will go through phases where I watch a movie every week, but I stop after a while. I read at least one book a week always and usually have more than one going at a time. I’ve had the same movies rented out from Netflix since before Thanksgiving and am thinking of canceling Netflix because I just haven’t felt like watching one.
Is everyone limiting this to novels longer than 250 pages?
Narnia, Taran, Dahl, Wrinkle in Time, The Dark is Rising, Zelazny, Asimov, and many, many more series/books I read as a kid are probably less than 250 pages each.
If I included all such books, then books would be ahead by a ridiculously huge margin. Going by what the OP stated and limiting it to 250+ page novels, it is closer, but books are still significantly ahead. I have watched a lot of tv, but mostly series, not movies.
Movies, and I’ve read a lot of books. Going through the TV schedule for the past week, I’ve spotted about a dozen movies I saw or watched a substantial chunk of for the first time (many of them were on TCM), and maybe another half-dozen I sampled briefly (for as little as a minute – some of these were also TCM offerings).
During the same week, I managed to polish off only one book, Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, and that was a sentimental revisit. So it goes…
I was going to leap in and automatically say that I have read more books but I think I read between 50 and 100 a year since my early teens, so lets say 75 a year for 40 years = 3,000.
I recently decided to start voting on IMDB for all the movies I have seen, to offset the recentness factor. So when I look up Shooter to check that Antoine Fuqua did, in fact, direct Training Day and The Replacement Killers I check that I have rated them and then go through all the Mark Wahlberg movies I have seen. I am up to 1,400 ratings but I am nowhere near finished, it just depends what comes up. I have seen over 50 Robert De Niro movies alone.
Books - I find the hero looks a lot more like me in the books than in the movies, and the settings are so much more exciting and wonderful.
I had a girlfriend who once said, “Movies and television are for people without imagination.” I always thought that was a bit strong, but I understood what she was saying.
I was an English & Film double major in college, so I’ve done plenty of both. But I’d say the answer is still definitely movies, not only because movies are quicker (and I’ll admit to being a pretty slow reader), but now my day-to-day job involves watching movies as well.
Movies, definitely. I don’t really read fiction anymore, and I’m not embarrassed to say it. When I’m commuting, I read the news.
DVDs being as cheap as they are now, I often browse around in stores and pick up $10 (or cheaper) blind buys to watch during a slow day. I love, love, LOVE film, and when the usual Hollywood stuff bores me, I have all these foreign ones I watch.