Why reading a novel is better than watching movies based on it…

“The context in which a photograph is seen affects the meaning the viewer draws from it”—This famous quote of Stephen Shore about photographs I believe fits well on books too.

Nowadays, we come across lot of online books and read (atleast are aware of) more books than we did a decade ago (by this I mean the number of readers is increasing, though per capita reading time I think has decreased), all thanks to the option to buy books online, due to the number of online bookstores.

But at the same time a lot of movies are being made on novels, it often makes us think, whether it is good to read a book or watch a movie based on it, which will be better is a question that we shall discuss here.

But for that we need to understand, what are books? For authors, books are their thoughts, interpretation of things and the way they look at the world.

For readers, I think books are like raw materials for a painting, it contains, a canvas, colors and some hints, which makes us paint a picture, on our minds when we read the books.

Try to concentrate, what happens when you read online books, or even physical books, normally  as soon as we get involved in characters, incidents and emotions in a book, a movie runs in our mind and we tend to see it, i.e., we tend to interpret the book in our own way.

But when we watch a movie, we already have a picture. A movie based on a book is basically an interpretation of the book by the director. It is the picture, which the director could make in his mind, when he read the book.

Thus, I literally believe, movies on books restrict our own imagination, we are influenced by the director’s interpretation, we see from the eyes of the director. So I firmly believe that when it comes to movies based on books, we should prefer reading books, than watching movies. Its good to watch the movie after you have read the books.

So, before buying tickets, buy books online, read them and then go for movies!!

Happy Reading!