Books are better than Movies

I thank WriterSelbe for accepting. And yes, the first round was for acceptance; I thought I clearly expressed that R1.Books are better than movies. Most people who has read a book and seen the movie realizes that the book(s) was superior to the movie(s). However, this is not the purpose of the debate; rather, it is looking at books generally and movies generally. As such, i move to my first argument:1. Books are portableWith the introduction of the smartphone, tablet computer, and portable CD player, one is tempted to say that books are just as portable as movies now. This is not the case. There are many cases where the movie just cannot go where the book can. For example: the book is not asked to be turned off when the airplane takes off and when it lands; the book is not prohibited at school and will be taken away if the teacher sees it; the book’s screen does not glare in bright light, rather, the reader benefits from the bright light; and the book does not need headphones to wear or else people will be distracted by your movie. In addition, the book does not require batteries or other power source, which hamper the rage of the movie. While I do admit in dark situations, the book is virtually useless and it is hard to wrangle with expensive book lights, the book is, on average, more portable than its counterpart. More portability allows the reader to enjoy books more than movies.(While I’m ahead, I’ll mention e-books. E-books exhibit many of the problems seen above, but most books still come on bound paper. So, therefore, that argument is void.)2. Books are made into movies, not the other way aroundHarry Potter, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Pride and Prejudice. What do all these books have in common? They were all made into movies. With the exception of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which is loosely based on Blade Runner), there is no books that were based on books and were not written solely for the purpose of popularizing the movie and making the movie more money. There is much more flow the opposite way; in fact there are four [1] movies that are now playing (in Cinemark theaters) or coming soon (to Cinemark theaters, want to clear up) that are based on books. (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [2], Sherlock Holmes [3], The Adventures of Tintin [4], and War Horse. [5])This clearly demonstrates the difference between book and motion picture. Because movies are often adaptations of books, then that shows that movies need the book industry to help prop them up. Which is not a sign of superiority of the movie.3. Books engage one’s imaginationBoth books and movies tell you a story. However, they differ in how they tell you the story. Movies show you the story; books allow you to use your imagination and interpret it.This may sound like a lot of hard work, but, trust me, it’s not. You do it naturally. Here is an (imperfect) analogy: telling a story with a book and movie is like a basketball game. With the movie, you are in the stands watching the game unfold. You may get the benefit, if you can afford movie tickets, of being in the crowd, but that is it. When you read a book, it’s like you are actually in the game. You actually in the middle of the action. You are more engaged. While I do admit that you cannot control the outcome of the book, the analogy still stands: would you rather be actively engaged or on the sidelines, where your mind can drift more to getting more popcorn than the to the plot.There is also a second thing that can not be expressed with the analogy above: the interpretation aspect. In a book, your imagination can do a lot of work in making that thing so scary, while in the movie it just looks like a prop or computer animation. In other words, the movie has a limited budget for it to look as best it can, and it sometimes it does not look very good at all; your imagination has an unlimited budget to make the thing look absolutely marvelous; which makes the book a better format.4. Books are longerThis may sound counter-intuitive but this is a beneficial quality to books.In order to prove this point, I took out a favorite book of mine (The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean, which is nonfiction) opened it to a random page (pg. 146) and timed myself reading that page. I got 1:28.9; in other words I took one minute twenty eight and nine tenths of a second to read a page. The book, excluding “notes and errata” is 348 pages long. Doing some simple rounding and multiplication, I got 448.92 (from 348 * 1.29) which is more than SEVEN HOURS LONG. No one contiguous movie (that was successful) is that long.However, I enjoyed The Disappearing Spoon so much so that I put it along with my favorite books. If I got the same level of enjoyment out of that book, minute per minute as a film (I am going to use Up as my example) then I got 449 minutes of enjoyment out of The Disappearing Spoon while I only got 96 minutes [6] of enjoyment from Up. The book took about five time longer than the film, which means I got five time the amount of enjoyment from the book rather than the movie, which means that the book is superior.This, coupled with the previous points, allow me to say that the resolution is confirmed.Good luck to my opponent.[1] http://cinemark.com...[2]http://www.barnesandnoble.com...[3]http://www.barnesandnoble.com...[4]http://www.barnesandnoble.com...[5]http://www.barnesandnoble.com...[6] http://en.wikipedia.org...