Is reading novels really a better use of time than watching clips on YouTube? I like to read, not because I think it makes me a better man, as Shilo Brooks claims on his podcast, but because it’s pleasant. But why is it pleasant?
Dynomight advances several theories, of which two stand out to me:
Theory 5: Purity of vision. Movies are expensive to make. To be financially viable, they need to target a large slice of the population. Movies also reflect the combined efforts of many people. Both of these mean that movies are a compromise between different visions […] To quantify this, some searching suggests that around 10,000 feature films are released each year, as compared to around 1,000,000 novels.
David Foster Wallace, among others, made the point that TV is dumb because it caters to the lowest common denominator. A related consequence of more novels than movies being made is that novels can cater to extremely specific tastes. This makes it more likely that there’s a novel out there that speaks to you more than any movie ever could. A great and unfulfilled promise of site like Goodreads is that they will help us find those gems. Maybe AI will succeed where book reviews have failed.
However, I find this is the best reason to read:
Theory 8: Non-fungible time. In the end, I don’t think novels are the best way to spend your time. In my view no novel—not even War and Peace—is as good as a truly great conversation. But great conversations are hard to create […] In these situations, maybe reading a novel is the best thing you could do in the category of things you could realistically do.
Nehaveigur 