I’m feeling very accomplished. I watched all of Transparent on Saturday.
But I know that doesn’t count as an accomplishment.
Reading a book in a day is impressive. Watching a season on Amazon Prime Instant Video is a binge.
Why is that?
Why is reading up here and TV watching down here?
(This is a Kelly Bensimon-ism from Real Housewives of NY, and in my book — so to speak, ha! — you’re smart if you got it.)
Is it because reading is a skill you have to wait till age 6 to learn, whereas TV you’re pretty much born knowing how to do? That makes breastfeeding above TV watching, because there’s that “latching” thing babies have to get the hang of. TV watching doesn’t require that.
Is it because reading requires imagination to picture the visuals, and TV watching doesn’t? What if you get the version of the book that says “Now a Major Motion Picture” on the cover and has a photo of Kiera Knightley or Ryan Gosling, or Gabourey Sidibe with a bucket of Popeye’s chicken, so your mind doesn’t have to do any hard imagining?
Is it because there are slow and fast readers, but the same TV show takes a smart person and a dumb person the same amount of time to watch, assuming they’re both held hostage by the same commercials?
(For the record, I’m a really slow reader. In first grade, the teacher thought I was super-fast because I kept telling her I was done with my book and ready for the next one. But I was lying. )
Is it because heavy readers are book worms, and heavy TV watchers are couch potatoes?
Doesn’t seem fair. Worms aren’t attractive, and of course their mouth matches their anus, but at least they seem industrious. A potato doesn’t even have the energy to creep and burrow. Why is that the label TV watchers get, when you can get just as fat and lumpy reading a book as you can watching TV? Also, you can go way faster on the treadmill watching a show than you can trying to read. If you run fast while reading, you’ll trip and fall off, trust me. So TV burns more calories. Oh snap!
Is it a notion left over from when TV was all crap?
But it was never all crap. Even during the Three’s Company/ Love Boat/ Fantasy Island golden era of crap, you had The Odd Couple and Mary Tyler Moore in reruns, at least.
And I’ll bet the ratio of good books to crappy books is way, way smaller than the ratio of good TV to bad TV.
Case in point: Have you ever read a Danielle Steele book? They make up half of the world’s printed matter, and every heroine in them has “grey-green flecked hazel eyes, long, soft, chestnut brown hair, and a waspish waist.” We learn this when she studies herself in the mirror and sums up what she sees. THAT is crap.
Crap TV is so much better than crap books.
Crap TV is Ramona on Real Housewives saying “Kadooz” instead of “Kudos,” which is more quotable then any piece-o-shit-but-that’s-OK-because-it’s-still-a-book book I’ve ever found in a beach hotel’s lending library.
All that said, I love books. I just have an easier time finding the TV I love, so I watch more than I read.
And that said, you MUST watch Transparent. Subscribe to Amazon Prime, it’s worth it and you’ll use it all the time anyway, to get things delivered that you keep forgetting to pick up at the store.
Now you.
Do you think reading is smarter than TV watching?
What great TV have you watched lately?
What great books? And business/ self-development books don’t count, because enough already, I don’t want to hear about them and how they helped you step out of your comfort zone, I’m talking about great fiction. Please.
TELL ME IN THE COMMENTS
I vote for books. Whenever I’m home alone, I rarely turn the TV on, it’s the first thing my husband does. But books, there’s always something for my intriguing.
First in fiction, I’ll plug my husband’s book: “When The Angels Cry-The Story of Arielle.” It’s inspirational: coincidences versus miracles; and it was a story he was given in a dream after having a cardiac arrest.
Non-fiction, though it reads like fiction because it seems so unbelieveable-“The Glass Castle.”
However, I loved the movie and the book “The Help.”
I remember, back in Ireland and back when “they” intoned that “Television spells the death of families, as everyone sits in his or her own space focused on the glowing box in the corner and not interacting with one another” looking up one evening from the book I was reading and seeing my father, reading. My mother, reading, my older sister and younger brother, reading.
Each of us isolated in the world our individual book was creating with us. Had we been watching television, at least the world would have been somewhat similar.
Since then I decided that good entertainment is good entertainment whether oral on the tongue of a storyteller or a poet, pressed between the leaves of a book (or the e-ink of an e-reader), or moving/talking pictures on a screen.
The medium is different and uses different tools. The goal remains story (by and large.)
I signed up for Laura’s webinar too!!!
I am a reader. Love to read fiction, business books, I have to force myself to read, it feels like punishment for my sins. Not that they aren’t full of good info, just I feel like Kristen in that they act as sleep aids.
Too many great books to list: Look Homeward Angel, Thomas Wolfe, The Geography of Bliss, Eric Weiner…I can never think of titles when under pressure.
I rent (free) from our local library all the BBC and HBO shows we don’t get as we have very basic cable TV. Latest, “The Village” “Masters of Sex.”
Great post as always Laura!
I suffer from guilt watching TV and my watching is eclectic. I don’t watch reality shows. I depend on my girls to tell me what to watch and then sometimes reject it anyway. It took me years to ‘get’ Joss Whedon and now I love his stuff. (I didn’t see Avengers.) I read lots of books at the same time and resent bad writing. I mix fiction and non-fiction depending on what grabs my attention at any time. Right now I am in the middle ages and having a wonderful time but also reading a novel called Life After Life: A Novel by Kate Atkinson. Just started it and it’s good. Also struggling through 1Q84 which I think is poorly written but still trying to decide if I am right about that.
I have to say I’m a disaster at both reading and watching television. My addictive behavior comes out full force. If I’m watching t.v., I’m glued to the thing and I can’t look away for hours. If I’m reading I’ll binge read and ignore my children. I also tend to fall asleep easily during both activities. We have a family sized bean bag in front of our television and I invariably fall asleep when we gather to cuddle and watch. My husband’s fantasy is to have a wife who reads next to him in bed at night (he has piles of fat non-fiction and lofty history books piled about his head) I can keep my eyes open for less than 10 minutes and I’m out, no matter how much I love the book I’m reading. If I have a choice between reading, watching t.v and sleeping, I’ll pick sleeping every time! What does that say about my intellectual level?
Kristen, I love your reply…it had me chuckling. I say you are so intellectually brilliant, your powerful brain needs sleep to keep it working at such high capacity.
For me it’s easiest of all to get my entertainment through audio books, which I can listen to without having to look up from my beadwork. It’s kind of the cross-between both worlds. 🙂
You can feel great about watching TV if you reclassify your favorite shows in business/self-help categories:
Mad Men – content marketing, conversion
House of Cards – building relationships with trend leaders
Broad City – refining brand identity (?? I’ll go with it)
In books: I just read The Interestings (Meg Wolitzer) and it is a great read if you grew up thinking you were an artistic type only to be slapped in the face by cold, hard reality, Lena Dunham’s disheartening mega rocketship to stardom, and health insurance deductibles when you entered the real world.
Just kidding, it was great! Now I’m on Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and spending the mornings reading Marie Kondo’s book about throwing stuff away.
Partial list of shows I love:
Homeland
Orange is the New Black
Newsroom
The Walking Dead
Game of Thrones
Nashville
Modern Family
Too many reality shows to list — no apologies
Currently powering through new blue ray collection of all 6 Star Wars
Will then go through yearly binge of Lord of the Rings
Currently re-watching the entire West Wing series on Netflix
Hard-fast rule of mine: Never read a book that will be a movie. Because the book will always be better and I will definitely see the movie and don’t want to be disappointed. (No one understands this reasoning, but it makes perfect sense to me.)
I very rarely read fiction. All my books are business books, self-help/educational. So…I’ve got nothing to list there.
Movies. Movies. MOVIES! I like even the bad ones because I love knowing that a whole crew got paid for a few weeks or months and were just happy to have the paycheck.
p.s.
I signed up for the webinar!
P.S. Why don’t you kill two birds with one stone and read books about TV shows (as I often do)? I recently purchased the new Norman Lear memoir and I can’t wait to read it.
I find that the bulk of my reading is in the categories of biography/autobiography and cultural history. And yet I’ve seldom, if ever, heard you mention your favorite books in these categories. I’m curious to hear what they are.
I’ve mostly read Please Kill Me – An Uncensored Oral History of Punk (which had been on my shelf for so many years). A great deal of it was excellent, especially the early chapters discussing the pre-punk years of Iggy, the Velvets and the MC 5. A few of the later chapters detailing the drugs/sex/violence of people I never heard of we’re not so interesting. Certainly anyone with an interest in “dirty old 1970’s New York” should absolutely read this book.
Have your read Just Kids by Patti Smith? If not I very highly recommend it.
Thanks Bruce! You just gave me some Xmas ideas. Keep ’em flowing. My 16 year old son is a musician who has a amazing taste in music. Very eclectic. He love punk. I bought him a book on Mod culture, but didn’t know which punk one to buy. I’m reading Billy Idol’s right now, but just because I grew up with him and not because I thought it would be any good. Haha!
Ignore all of the typos. I’m trying to multi-task right now and it’s not working…