Back on track: Read don't just watch

Books

Now that I feel that I have gotten my focus back, my mind has been much more tuned to how I assess and disseminate information.  I am hoping to stay on track with this post.  My wife and I went to the movies on Friday.   We watched "Ticket to Paradise" with George Clooney and Julia Roberts.  Wow, not even through the first paragraph and I am already rambling.  The movie is not what is of interest, it was the previews.  Specifically a preview for a movie called "She Said".  It is a movie about the reporters that broke the story regarding Harvey Weinstein.  I am always skeptical when viewing movie trailers and whether or not the movie would be worth seeing.  What really sparked my interest was the phrase, "based on the book".   My immediate thought after hearing this phrase was I may not want to see the movie but I would definitely like to read the book.

I cannot think of many non-fiction books that have been turned into Hollywood style feature films.  One that immediately comes to mind is "The big short".  The only other movies I can think of would be biographical movies such as Patton or Milk.  I am not sure if these movies were based on specific books.  Why would I immediately discount the informative value of  a movie and place value in the book.  This bias on my part is not without some empirical support.  Many times we have all said that the book was better than the movie.

A search of "Why is reading the book better than the movie" yields predictable results.  Unfortunately these a centered around books of fiction.  I am interested in information and non-fiction books.  Thinking back to my school days I do not recall ever doing a book report on a non-fiction book.  It might have been a good exercise to analyze a non-fiction book.  I am going to have to depend on my own thoughts and insights for this particular post.

Reading provides better insight for a couple of reasons.  I will admit that technological advances have negated some of the advantages.  10 to 20 years ago I would have listed the ability to reread certain information as an advantage.  However with streaming we usually have the capability of reviewing an interview or segment of a movie to fully understand it.  I still believe that the act of rereading and reviewing information makes a book a much better source of information.  You can take much more care when reading and this would lead to a better understanding of the topic.

Generally when a person writes something for distribution they have taken more care into making the the information clear and concise.  The correct words, grammar and phrases have been chosen.  sometimes these choices are only evident after several rewrites and after much anxiety.  Interviews and podcasts are usually under time constraints and are subject to multiple outside influences.  These external factors may lead to a participant to convey unclear statements.  This lack of clarity may lead us to misinterpret the information.  One of the biggest benefits of an e-reader is the ability to immediately purchase a book when watching an interview.  In fact I get a number of books now from my local library and their on line services.  Zero cost for books that are immediately downloadable!

Also a written document has had time to be peer reviewed (in most cases).  Sometimes this has been done as part of the creation process, which is very common for scientific papers.  It could be post publications critiques or reviews.  These secondary sources are usually not readily available for interviews or podcast although movie reviews would be available.

Books also contain more detail.  I read "The big short" and it was a tough read.  It took several rereads to understand what shorting a stock was or what a tranche was.  Still I am not 100% sure of my complete understanding of the terms and events.  I did not see the movie associated with the book but I could imagine that some information had to be condensed to fit the book into a 2 hour movie.  Maybe in a later post I will watch the movie, reread the book and then compare the informational value of both.  I may do the same with the movie and book "She said".

Lastly the logistics of reading lead to better understanding of the information.  When we watch TV or youtube we are subject to the same external distractions I mentioned earlier.  When we read we tend to take more efforts to eliminate distractions.  This allows us to focus better and more deeply assess the information.  In short we are more open to ideas when we are not distracted.

There are advantages to reading.  I cannot leave this without some opposing points.  Reading obviously takes longer.  A movie would be around 2 hours, a podcast or news magazine show an hour and an interview might be as long as 10 minutes.  It usually takes multiple days to read a book.  There is usually some lag time between an event and the written account of it.  TV and youtube is definitely more timely.  Also visual sources can convey certain information more clearly.  As they say a picture is worth a 1000 words.

All said though books and written accounts provide a clear, integral and detailed information source that we can focus on to understand the events and information we deal with.