In its silence, a book is a challenge: it can't lull you with surging music or deafen you with screeching laugh tracks or fire gunshots in your living room; you have to listen to it in your head. A book won't move your eyes for you the way images on a screen do. It won't do the work for you. To read a story well is to follow it, to act it, to become it - everything short of writing it, in fact. Reading is not 'interactive' with a set of rules or options, as games are; reading is actual collaboration with the writer's mind. No wonder not everybody is up to it.
Ursula K. Le Guin
4 comments:
I do think this is true, reading is an active process rather than passive. Maybe that's why so many choose TV or films over books?
Yes! Yes! Yes! Which is why I prefer books to movies.
I love Le Guin and I think she's spot on about reading, but I do also think other media are sometimes not given enough credit for being challenging and inviting the audience's active participation.
Le Guin has a very succinct way of putting it, doesn't she?
I also think there's a place for other media. Some nights are just perfect for curling up with family to watch a movie together. I love that. There just seems to be more noise than challenge associated with movies and tv. With a little bit of searching and selection, though, there is some quality out there to be found.
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