Over on her blog, fellow Arlington Writers Group member, Colleen Moore asks, “Why read the book when you can watch the movie?” She has some interesting comparisons between movies that live up to the books. But she concludes by asking, “So, why read the book?”
I think it is an important enough question to reproduce my response here:
We read because we want to actively participate in the creation of the story. It is a collaborative effort with the author and if they are good at their job, and we have a half-decent imagination, the words disappear and we experience the story completely and three-dimensionally in our heads. And there’s nothing quite like that.
That has been my experience, anyway. It is why books like Connie Willis’s Blackout/All Clear and George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones and Isaac Asimov’s Forward the Foundation and W. P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe and Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes have left me breathless, worn out, and utterly amazed.
A movie–even HBO’s Game of Thrones adaptation–has never had quite the same effect on me.
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Jamie, Thanks for the cross-post. I have to tell you, I am loving the Game of Thrones series (the books). I just finished Storm of Swords and I cannot wait to continue with the 4th book. And you’re right, the HBO series, while good, is nowhere near as good as the book.