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Books and films both tell stories, but what we want from a book can be different from what we want from a movie. Is this true for you? If so, what’s the difference between a book and a movie?
I’ll start off by noting that movies, being visual, require more processing by the right half of the human brain.
I do not want a movie to inform me. I do not want my thoughts to be provoked by a movie. I want things to blow up. I want people to fight with swords. I want vehicles moving at high speeds. I want superpowers. (Actually, I do want superpowers, but that’s a different story.) This, of course means that my movie interests are very narrow. No dramas, no historical romances, no romantic comedies, no slasher pics, no torture porn, just lots of flashing lights and loud noises. I am geeking out so much over this summer’s movie line-up–Speed Racer, Iron Man, Prince Caspian, Indiana Jones, The Incredible Hulk, The Dark Knight, Hellboy II–that my wife may make me sleep on the couch. I would do all manner of ethically questionable things if they would just hurry up and make the live-action Justice League movie.
Reading, on the other hand, engages more of the left half of the human brain.
My reading preferences are much more varied. I read nonfiction, mysteries, thrillers, fantasies, literature, pretty much anything that looks interesting in the bookstore. Sometimes I do read simply because I want to know more about a subject, or because I want to challenge myself by reading something different from what I normally would, or because I want a different point of view.
So basically, I have opposite attitudes to the two media. I really do wish the halves of my brain were on speaking terms.
Apologies for getting all meta with the blogging today, but I am just a wee bit skeeved by a search term through which someone found this blog. Someone actually searched “hairy nuns.” Seriously? That’s just not right. I had to think a while about how my blog would turn up in such a search, and I finally remembered that a short story I wrote, Hairy (as in “a hairy situation”), makes a passing reference to a soup kitchen run by Orthodox nuns. I think Dr. Phil needs to make a house call on this person. Or Jerry Springer. Or both.
We babysat the two-and-a-half-year-old son of my wife’s friend this weekend. He’s a fun kid, but it made me realize that perhaps I’m still a little immature to have children. If a child of mine came running up to me and asked me if he or she could build a trebuchet in order to fling chickens over the neighbor’s house, there is a very good chance that my reaction would be, “Cool! Let me help!” when I think that the proper response should be, “No.” I could be wrong, though.
Is there something wrong with me?
I’m thirty-three years old, and on occasion I still have an internal debate with myself about what superpower would be the most awesome to have. Then it occurs to me that Superman has more than one superpower, so why should I shortchange myself? I can stay on this train of thought for hours until I have to remind myself that Superman is a fictional character and that my chances of developing superpowers are very small.
We’re trying to sell our house currently. Not much luck. We finally broke down and brought in a “stager” to make our house more appealing to potential buyers. We have a lot of books. They are, however, stacked nicely on book shelves. Personally, I think they’re attractive. One of the first things the “stager” said was that we needed to remove “half of the books” to make the house less intimidating. My mouth dropped. It’s not like we’re leaving the books to loom over whoever buys the house, (Although that is a funny mental image.) or that we have copies of The Anarchist’s Cookbook and How to Hide the Body: A Primer for Beginning Serial Killers on display.
I’m not so sure I would want to sell my house to someone who would be intimidated by all of our books.
Filed under: Reading, Writing | Tags: Booking Through Thursday, books, memes, Reading, Writing
Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries–if any–do you have in your library?
