Books are silent, but they say alot

I think in todays society books are becoming a rarer commodity, were it not for the resurgence of Lord of the Rings brought about by it being converted to a film (Pure irony in itself) and Harry Potter (Again converted to film almost as soon as the books are written!) I don't think reading would be considered "mainstream" at all these days, which is really sad actually, because I find that there's something satisfying about reading a book, the feel of the pages as you turn each over, the way your mind develops the characters within your mind. Or in the sense of a factual book how your mind links past knowledge with the new knowledge from the book you are reading.

It's something that is ultimately lost in film and TV, like a distillation that instead of leaving you with the purest concentrated form somehow leaves you with the essential properties evaporated and only the hardier essence remaining.

A book relies on ones own imagination to fill in the gaps and make the characters and their surroundings real... there's no better CGI than the human imagination :-)

I guess what I'm trying to say is that movies and TV are great for getting a story or point to the masses, but it's all too easy to miss the core of the subject... when you watch a film or TV and something occurs that you don't understand, or a word is used that isn't in your vocabulary you rarely investigate it as to do so would involve you either missing the story or having to rewind. However in a book, you are at leisure to re-read a paragraph, search the appendix or pick up a dictionary (I read LotR with a dictionary always by my side) and investigate further... if you read books like LotR and Harry Potter (For shame, something I have yet to read) and delve deeper in to the meanings of words and names it can display a vast wealth of untapped information, and shed a light on the thoughts of the author... the origins of the work. I'm not saying that authors plagiarise, far from it, you cannot plagiarise myth, folklore or religion (Although in the Red dwarf universe they did find the missing first "disclaimer copyright" page from the Bible), take the DaVinci code, as a mason I appreciate certain elements more so than others would as I can read deeper into the myth and legend that has been borrowed from freemasonry. I can also poke fun at the misinterpretations or rather deliberate changes from what i understand to be true.

Next time you read a book take the chance to look deeper into it's subtleties, rarely do authors just "make stuff up" on the fly.