My problem with books

I find that a good book can paint a much more detailed picture than a movie, particularly when it comes to what a character is feeling or thinking. Reading is definitely more of an investment than watching a movie and if the book sucks it can feel like a major waste of time, but if it's a great story then I think the book usually wins out.

 

With the extended details in books rather than television and comics, you become much more attached to the book. It's a give-and-take relationship. You give the effort of reading all the details and longer scenarios. If it's a good book you enjoy these details and the slower pace. When you're done, it's much more gratifying and you feel the loss more because you gave so much to the book. It's a lot like a relationship I guess. You just have to make a commitment.

 

Yeah I guess everyone's different.

 

I don't read fiction, mostly philosophy.

There are philosophers, like Hobbes (Leviathan), Nietzsche (Between Good and Evil, Gay Sciences), and Hume (Treaties on Human Nature, Dialogues concerning naturla religion) who are all incredible writers that can paint their ideas through incredible language which is mesmerizing and gratifying to read.
THEN there are philosophers like Hegel (Phenomenology), Kant (Critique of Pure Reason), Marx (German ideology) who are fucking awful writers whom reading is chore, but is gratifying in its own way, but not in the same way that the people who can actually write are.

 

Your post is funny because I immediately thought of the Lord of The Rings series. I've only read The Hobbit and am looking forward to reading the rest when I'm less busy, but my friends say that it does drag on a bit with how much detail Tolkien includes. I'm a slow reader, so reading can take forever for me. I get what you mean, but reading Pride and Prejudice was amazing and the movie(s) just make me like the book more.

 

The descriptions can be great and really add to my mental picture of the story, but sometimes I wonder why the authors need to describe what they do.

For example, I'm reading Murakami and he always has to describe every meal every character eats. I don't understand why that it is. It really doesn't add anything to the story at all. It seems unnecessary.

 

this is basically the problem I have with most of the Russian writers (Tolstoy mainly) who take too long to get to the fucking point.

it's like reading a painting

 

How dare you insult my god!

I actually like the immaculate detail. I don't want literature like Huxley's that reads as an essay of metaphors or open discussion poorly disguised as a plot. I want realistic descriptions of life and the setting forth of the realities of the day.

If anything, boredom from seeming excesses of detail and apparently pointless focus on material things can actually be an important part of a novel. Madame Bovary is a good example of when you're meant to be bored for the majority of it. The attention to detail is not only good for creating an accurate mental picture. Literature can capture the trivial details of a society and the view characters have on the world, even if it's not the focus of a novel.

Hugo, on the other hand, with his habit of writing chapters about architecture, was indeed a terrible thing to befall the time-pressed reader who wants to actually read a novel instead of a collection of disparate dissertations.

 

Then you have something like "To the Lighthouse", where, 100 pages in, the characters have barely moved five feet. But that's the point--it's all about the descriptions and the thoughts and musings of the characters. A novel like that isn't for everyone, however.

 

I had to study his the Elephant vanishes collection.

I got a call from my friend in the early hours of the morning with a distressed "but what does the hamburger mean!?"

As it so happens, the hamburger was an extremely important point. I even managed to complete a full practice essay on the hamburgers in a Window.

 

I wish I could've studied Murakami in school. The fact that I have no one to discuss "Kafka on the Shore" with (I know no one in person who's read it) is part of the reason I'm feeling a bit lost after finishing that novel...

 

See, here's the thing. Detail does build a story up, but it can also break it. Too many details can bog a story down, make it boring to read - I really hate reading Jane Austen for this specific reason, too many frivolous details, not enough story. But the right details make a story excellent.

In John Dies at the End, David Wong paints a beautiful image of a meat beast climbing out of a freezer and assembling itself into a literally ham-fisted, turkey-headed monstrosity that just wasn't quite done justice in the film, and as much as I love Don Coscarelli, I have to admit that I wish there was a little more drama to his film interpretation of the meat beast. Douglas Adams describes a lifeform that looks like several David Bowies stuck together, which I'm positive looks more fantastic in my mind than it would on film. In The Fault in our Stars, I imagined a much different sculpture than the one they presented on film (ironically, what was presented on film was a recreation of a real sculpture, and since I had created such a specific image of "Funky Bones" in my mind, I don't appreciate the real sculpture nearly as much as my personal, fictional piece).

Maybe that's part of what I like about books though - they let you create the story for yourself, using the details they hand you. John Green's description led me to imagine a much different sculpture than the real one he was describing. There's something to like about a medium that you personalize like that, a creative factor that you don't get with movies or video games.

Which doesn't mean I don't appreciate either of those mediums, because I really do. Going back to Don Coscarelli's film version of John Dies at the End, the scene where the police officer's moustache detatches itself from his face and flies around the room like a bat - that was spot on to what I imagined when I read the book, and I was ridiculously happy to see it put to film so perfectly. And not to mention, there are dozens of things done with film that are easier presented in that medium than they are in books. And the interactive nature of video games puts them into their own category of story-telling media - nothing else does what video games do. I would read book versions of video game stories, sure, but if anything, they'd only leave me valuing the nature of the games themselves more. I especially love games where you can choose which quest-lines to complete, and that's something no other medium can capture.

TL;DR: Details can make or break a story, depending on whether they enhance what's happening or just consume page space frivolously. Also, movies, books, and video games are three unique mediums that tell stories in different and fantastic ways, and I can't really talk badly about any of them.

 

it's not that I don't appreciate Russian literature for its importance and beauty, I just can't read it without wanting to jump out of a window.

Certainly better than that other author of Russian origin who was a US emigree who shall not be named less I go off into a rant about what a terrible writer and fake philosopher she is.

 

I don't read much books either, but I found some books 'easy' to read.

The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Some books, while might have nice movie adaptation, are worth reading on their own, and will not bore u in great details, in fact, they'll keep u reading for a long time because they are ... funny

The Witcher books, might also be enjoyable especially if u played the games

 

It depends on the book, for me.

Some do a fine job with describing things, and the plot moves along. Some, however, will spend an eternity describing something. I could understand if, say, the individual was doing a lot of something, but if you're taking two pages to tell me how exactly their arm moved, we're going to have a problem...

Movies tend to take some liberties from their literature sources, so it is always interesting to see and compare the two mediums. For example, the film Jaws and the novel Jaws are, aside from a shark causing shenanigans, a very different read. If that novel was made exactly as it was written for the big screen, Jaws wouldn't be considered a classic. The novel, which has it's interesting moments (like a lesbian character, whaaaat?), it doesn't make any of the characters all that likable. Even Stephen Spielberg thought this, so a lot of changes were made, for the better.

Then you have Stephen King novels and films. Many films based on King's works are, usually, cut to pieces. They have so many scenes and moments removed, just to fit into a respectable time frame. Sometimes this isn't so bad, like with The Shining, but it is noticeable with IT. People say that Pennywise the Clown from IT was scary, that the film scarred them as children, which I could see if you had a phobia of clowns. But the thing is, Pennywise is very tame in the movie (well, made-for-television movie; which explains the smaller budget), whereas in the novel he's a lot more than a menacing joker.

Another work of Stephen King, The Raft, is a short story about four teenagers trapped, more or less, on a floating wood piece (hence "the raft"), by an oil-looking blob that picks them off, one by one. This short story appeared in Creepshow 2 (it's actually the best part of that, otherwise, mediocre film), where it played out roughly the same, save the ending. In the film, the last kid swims to shore and makes it, right before being swallowed by the blob. In the novel, though, he's the last one left... and he can't sit down or else the blob will get him, through the crevices of the wooden piece, so he has to stand. He's tired, starting to zone out, and the book ends with him looking at the blob, which is reflecting very prettily due to the rising sun, leaving the reader to make up their own mind as to what happens...

Logically, this ending wouldn't have suited a film adaptation. So, in some regards, a film can't always give you a strong ending.

When you find a good book, you'll be drawn into it. It took me a while to appreciate literature over viewing, but when I did, it was for the better I think. It has really helped with my writing, for one, and it allows me to better get inside somebody's head -- something a film can only do, in bits and pieces.

 

That's why I like the hunger games trilogy. It's not like "Katniss walked through the forest with the bow in her hand, seeking revenge on the Careers because they tried to track her down and chased her up a tree and wouldn't leave that resulted in her getting attacked by tracker jackers.." It's descriptive but right to the point.

 

I don't have any problem with books. If I don't like something about a book I drop it at that instant.

Unless someone or something force me to bear with it, I drop any book, movie, game or comic book the moment I lost interest with them.

Probably this why I usually follow my trusted and true authors. As I love their writing style, I finish their books in mere hours/days.