Not many people talk about reading nowadays. Everything is all about waiting for the next movie to come out. While that’s great, in many ways reading books provides a much more enriching experience in the long run than solely viewing  a film version.

By reading the books first, you get a sense of the true characters, how they think, what they feel, their pasts, and so much more. Not every actor or actress convey all of that to a viewer in 90 minutes. It’s a hard task that actors and actresses strive to accomplish.

For example, in Divergent by Veronica Roth (WARNING! SPOLIER IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FIRST MOVIE) Tris’s mother gets shot while trying to protect her daughter and get her to safety. She ends up dying and while it’s tragic, the movie doesn’t show the impact it really had on Tris. She is torn apart with grief and guilt for her mother’s death. She believes is was all her fault.

Actress, Shailene Woodley tried her best, but the book is from Tris’ point of view, so in the book she’s able to talk about the pain, anger, and guilt she feels after Dauntless and Erudite leaders are starting a war to eradicate the Divergent.

Another reason reading is so much better is that movies can’t always do everything. There are always deleted scenes and scenes that don’t get filmed at all, thus changing the plot.

For example, in The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Katniss does not get the infamous Mockingjay pin the Hob (the black market), she actually gets it from the Mayor’s daughter Madge. And there is a story behind Madge and her connection in the books too which enhances Katniss’s drive to do her best to try to win.

There are so many important aspects of story lines that tend to get overlooked if a book is made into a movie. The movies themselves could be great, but it’s so hard to really capture the meaning behind everything and be able to connect with the characters.

Reading books never hurt anyone and you can learn from them. Whether it’s something as simple as to why you shouldn’t lie (because it snowballs into a bigger web of lies) or if it’s more complicated than that or sometimes more personal. Books tend to be more detailed and able to explain more clearly what is happening and what the character(s) are thinking and feeling. Movies aren’t always able to do so. Therefore, by reading you will be able to take more from books than movies.