Top 10 Reasons Why Life is Infinitely Better Reading Books

...and not watching movies. (This is in reference to non-fiction books, btw -- and quality reads, not crap).

1. Movies leave you under a spell; an illusory haze so you cannot see. Books give control of the haze others are under.

2. Movies manufacture illusion without you knowing it, while books allow you to choose experience illusion, without decoupling awareness from experience.

3. Books enable to you to explain and teach about illusions and reality, placing you at "cause" instead of at "effect" where you are a victim of illusion.

4.. Books clarify and provide understandings. Movies merely create suspence and foreshadowing.

5. You think more clearly with a book because your brain gets neurological activity firing that is congruent with the logic of the book. Kind of like a "mental-cerebral" version of "if you smile, you'll feel happy". If you read a smart book, you'll think more intelligently. Movies trick and obfuscate intelligence.


6. Books, you have total control over the pace, and "order you read", movies (unless you fumble with FF and RW buttons, you do not have the same control.

7. Books, your vision is the movie and you are the director; movies lack that customization.

8. Books teach and entertain and create more cohesive thinking; movies, merely entertain with an inkling of "teaching".

9. Both movies and books inspire, but books provide an inspiration that is more enduring beacuse it is "your own version" of the inspiration.

10. Finally, books don't need electrical outlets, high-tech dvd players, surround sound and the like. Books are portable; you can bring them anywhere. Laptops are fixing that with movies, but with a book, you use your "built-in" surround sound, imax, widescreen mental imagery vision, which is infinitely more crisp, alive, and exciting than a movie screen.

I'm a former movie junkie (thousands and reruns) and have rediscovered the joy of reading!

I wouldn't say that I'm a former movie-junkie but I'm definately a former 'couch-potato' who - 6 years ago - got off his ass and started jogging, cycling, rowing, and doing weight-lifting... ... ...I also began reading and have, like you, discovered it's joy!

What books are your favourite? Mine are undoubtedly:

Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
William Golding - Lord of the Flies.

I love Lord of the Flies!...I read it a year before I had to in school Reading is awesome-too bad too many of the people around my age don't read unless they're forced to...and sometimes don't even then...oh well.

I love Ann Rule's true crime books. Awesome

Chucky wrote:I wouldn't say that I'm a former movie-junkie but I'm definately a former 'couch-potato' who - 6 years ago - got off his ass and started jogging, cycling, rowing, and doing weight-lifting... ... ...I also began reading and have, like you, discovered it's joy!

What books are your favourite? Mine are undoubtedly:

Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
William Golding - Lord of the Flies.

I'm talking about non-fiction here chucky. There's already some other post going about fiction books, but reading is reading. I referenced non-fictio nbecause you can be put under the spell of illusion by fiction books (no where nealy as bad as movies, though), but if a novel is quality (epics, classics), it is highly worthwhile to read. You sound lllusion" technically can put youike a real multi-sport health nut...with a brain!!
I surf, run (1000s of miles), swim, martial arts, wieght train, and used to do massive biking but had 4 bikes stolen, so that has stopped, but other lively activities are going strong!!!!
Because you asked,
Some CURRENT (the list of best non-fiction authors ever is too long to list here) non-fiction autors are
Roger Ellerton
Bandler and Grinder
Those guys are NLP

Dan Millman -- Body Mind Mastery.f you hadn't already stumpled across this author, Dan Millman (former bigtime gymanst, now sports, motivational writer) is a GREAT author.Have you read millman?

as for fiction
I've read all the books you've listed except Defoe
Lord of the flies is an all-time classic, and personal favorite
Gray was boring (but meaningful), and Gulliver's was in "too ancient prose"

But you can tell a lot about a person's fave reads. You're an adventure; maybe with a twinge of anarchy (LoFlies); who cares about his image (DGray and Health), and probably has had a variety of very interesting stories to share.

Am I right or am I right??:)

~snowbird~ wrote:I love Lord of the Flies!...I read it a year before I had to in school Reading is awesome-too bad too many of the people around my age don't read unless they're forced to...and sometimes don't even then...oh well.

Whom are people your age? (If there are a lot of involunatary readers, I'm guessing people your age are youthful.)

By the way, if we're all going to start listing books, the fiction is great, too, but any one have non-fiction authors to share?

FineFriend wrote:I love Ann Rule's true crime books. Awesome

Ah, finefriend, the burgeoning lawyer? You like to be transported directly to the crime scene. What do you like about Ann Rule's style?

What about Crime and Punishment, did you like that? That was a very psychological crime novel.

What do you think of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?
“Ithas long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. To a great mind, nothing is little”. That was Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictitious deductive genius creation, whose entire method is “founded upon the observation of trifles”, which always solve the case!

Details definitely hold a vital importance, but a genius is someone who can see the big picture, while not losing site of those details.

In short, Sherlock Holmes is my all-time mystery-crime-fiction character.

kooz wrote:But you can tell a lot about a person's fave reads. You're an adventure; maybe with a twinge of anarchy (LoFlies); who cares about his image (DGray and Health), and probably has had a variety of very interesting stories to share.

Am I right or am I right??:)

That's amazingly the best description of myself I can ever remember hearing! Sincerely; it's all true. The only non-fiction books I read are autobiographies / biographies on people I am interested-in; plus books on bands or sports teams that I like. I also have read Death of a Salesman quite a few times.

My next book in line to read is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. However, for the past two years, the only literature I have been reading have been science magazines and National Geo's.

Kevin.

Chucky wrote:

kooz wrote:But you can tell a lot about a person's fave reads. You're an adventure; maybe with a twinge of anarchy (LoFlies); who cares about his image (DGray and Health), and probably has had a variety of very interesting stories to share.

Am I right or am I right??:)

That's amazingly the best description of myself I can ever remember hearing! Sincerely; it's all true. The only non-fiction books I read are autobiographies / biographies on people I am interested-in; plus books on bands or sports teams that I like. I also have read Death of a Salesman quite a few times.

My next book in line to read is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. However, for the past two years, the only literature I have been reading have been science magazines and National Geo's.

Kevin.

Dear Kevin-chucky,

Hey thanks for the awesome compliment; it reaffirms and validates the intuition! Really appreciate. Great, now I'm nervous that my ability to predict someone's characteristics and interests will falter. Hopefully, I just didn't get lucky deciphering your personality.

You reaffirmed my assumption, and I'll try to give my "deductive predictions of personality" more credit than they've been giving (in other words, believing in yourself and your predictions more frequently)!

Marquez is a WILD author. I've read parts of "' Solitude", but had a lot going on in my life at the time of trying to read it and with all the families being reborn and dying, it was too much of a "trip" at the time, but it would be interesting to reconnect with it.

That said: cool deal about the bios; good to know about someone's life. I am in know way insinuating you to be a small mind; you are for certain a great mind with your activities and literary interests, but I know E. Roosevelt said, “Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.” It's good to have a mix of people, event, and ideological writing in the mix, but a lot of your fiction books revolve around ideas (anarchy, freedom, leadership, etc. in LoFlies, for example), too, so that's probably "covered":)

Also, one interesting habit I've recently been doing is -- only with non-fiction books -- is reading from the middle of the book! I just open up to page "143", for example, if that page seems interesting, and then finish that chapter, and then hop around to chapter 2 or 7, or so if that seems interesting, and then maybe read 100 pages consecutively...eventually I read the whole book, but I can kind of "chunk the ideas" in my mind, in the order I want to learn them, and piece them all together when I finish the book. It's really a cool effect to the suddenly have concepts tie together "from both ends of the book" simultaneously!

kooz wrote:

~snowbird~ wrote:I love Lord of the Flies!...I read it a year before I had to in school Reading is awesome-too bad too many of the people around my age don't read unless they're forced to...and sometimes don't even then...oh well.

Whom are people your age? (If there are a lot of involunatary readers, I'm guessing people your age are youthful.)

By the way, if we're all going to start listing books, the fiction is great, too, but any one have non-fiction authors to share?

Yeah, people my age are youthful. I'm 16.