(no subject)

[dolari]

My last entry got me thinking about something I've wanted off my chest for a while now:

I am going to confess something,. Something that has caused people to straight up call me stupid, or, worse, throw a million books at me. I hardly read. I hardly read ANYTHING anymore. And for some reason this is seen as a cardinal sin by most of my friends.

When I was a kid, especially during Elementary and Middle School, I read EVERYTHING I could get my hands on. Absolutely everything. Fiction, non fiction, everything but fantasy stuff (Which I couldn't get into). IT was in late middle school, though, that I began to notice comics, and start drawing.

From that point on, I mostly began to focus on visual media...comic books, movies, television. They're not great literature, but I'm not asking for great literature - I'm more interested in how stories are being told VISUALLY. About the middle of highschool, I pretty much stopped reading books incessantly, and was watching MOVIES incessantly. Ask my parents, I was hitting one or two movies every weekend. My comic budget soared. I was taking scriptwriting lessons.

Eventually, I read less and less till I could count the number of books I read in a year on two hands. The number of movies/comics/TV, though went through the roof. But a problem emerged, one that I just didn't talk to any of my friends anymore, because they well...had issues:

1) "..." - This is the response most bibliophiles give me. As if I was walking around with my head cut off. These are usually good friends of mine, who are amazed at my writing skills, who obviously think I read Every Minute of the Day.

2) "YOU DON'T READ!? WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?!" These are the ones I hate...I've committed a cardinal sin. I am singlehandedly the reason that Terrible Television exists, because I obviously am watching really idiotic TV, or lowest common denominator movies. OR, worse, I'm out to CREATE some drivel. Some of these folks have even stopped talking to me.

3) "You're just not reading the right books, here's my personal library!" No. This won't work. The more books you give me, the more they will sit in the corner. I don't sit and watch TV, just like I don't sit and watch movies. I'm usually writing, or drawing as they're going on. You can't do that with a book (or a foreign language film...PAssion of the Christ is sitting unwatched cause I need to sit and read subtitles on it, and I don't have the time really to sit and watch a movie and NOT do something else).

So there, I said it. And I'm not apologetic. I'm a film buff. Not a bibliophile. So there. Pbbbbt.

Comments

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

No, no. I understand. And I'm sorry.

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

Don't be sorry...as far as I know, you've never been any of those three....

[iqtech.livejournal.com]

Jenn - you spend your days trying to get tech stuff across to people with fewer brain cells than the average AOLien. Read a book? Hell, I'm too mentally exhausted to do anything but read blogs and play eye candy puzzle games.

[estasia.livejournal.com]

blogs and eye candy puzzle games? that's what I am doing right now. =)

[estasia.livejournal.com]

hey. I dig. as long as you don't think of my reading as "rude behaviour". when I get into a book, I have to be reading it all the time. When I am out with friends I will leave the book alone, but I have been known to take the book in the car with me so I can read if I am left alone for more than five minutes. I am a slow reader. When I am at home, I read. My mother feels that I must be in the room with her in the evenings, that I shouldn't be "glued to my computer", but I don't always like what she is watching. So I sit and read in the same room with her while she watches TV. She considers this rude. If I am in the room with her I should be available to visit with her. She doesn't see the hypocrisy that the TV is to her, what the book is to me. She doesn't understand books at all. She doesn't read. She never read.

what was I saying?

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

>hey. I dig. as long as you don't think of my reading as "rude
>behaviour".

Oh, absolutely not! Just as Erinlefey. :) I lived for a good six months with folks who spent most of their spare time reading. I simply went with the flow.

On the flipside, they put up with me and the TV running all the time. :D

[salamanders.livejournal.com]

Meh I still think you should read! But each their own right? I love every sort of meida, tv, movies and books, They're all the same in my book!

[debbie-ann.livejournal.com]

I think it makes sense that as an artist yourself, you are more drawn to visual mediums of storytelling than just words on a page. I find I am that way myself.

[nathan-r.livejournal.com]

If I were to fall into one of your three categories, it would be the third. (Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens, right now!) But then again, my prose consumption has dropped off dramatically in the past few years as well, replaced mainly by comics. I dread the day when I've finally read everything Alan Moore has ever published...

[amw.livejournal.com]

Yeah fuck oath, i'm the same hey. Used to read 3, 4, 5+ books a week when i was in elementary and middle school. Soon as i hit highschool i stopped reading and i've read maybe 10 books since. Heaps of comics, heaps of websites, watched a bunch of movies, but books i just don't have time for any more. My brain is just not in the relaxed enough space to do it. Bleh.

[ghostangel.livejournal.com]

LJ is reading... >_>;

Anyways, I read a lot less than I did before. But my reasons are different. I just have too many things going on to really want to sit down and curl up with a book. I likes the books though :x

[invisible-gurl.livejournal.com]

My reading of "real" books dropped off too, I think, once I discovered comics. I've been drawing since as long as I can remember being alive, and so was very much drawn to visual styles of storytelling. I still read a lot, but graphic novels more than "plain" novels. ;-)