Aren’t books wonderful? They’re chock-full of entertainment, information, and assistance. Whether you choose to read fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or some of each of these, you can get a lot of pleasure out of books.
And you get it all with NO COMMERCIALS! Nobody’s stopping at a crucial point in the storyline or informative explanation to try to sell you a car, some medicine, a resort destination, or a political candidate. If you have two hours to spare and spend it all reading, it will literally be two hours of pure, solid reading—not one-third annoying pitch blather.And if, while you are reading, you feel a need to put the book down to use the bathroom, raid the fridge, or take an incoming phone call, you won’t miss out on crucial developments. When you’re ready to resume reading, you can pick up the narrative in exactly the place where you left off. You won’t have missed a thing.
If you fall asleep reading, you can pick the book up at the place where you left off. You won’t have missed finding out who the murderer was or how to keep your soufflé from falling or whether the couple will find their way back to each other or how to improve productivity in your office.
You get a much broader selection of materials with books, too. With cable or dish TV you may have 100 channels to choose from, but it’s entirely possible that none of those channels will be offering a program you want to see at the time when you are available to watch it. With books, on the other hand, you have a virtually limitless supply of choices, and they’re available most any time you want. If the book you wish to read isn’t already on your bookshelves or in the TBR pile on your nighttable, try Amazon or your local book store…or your library, from which you can borrow the book at no cost whatsoever.
The library is also a great place to just browse for books you never knew you wanted to read, never even knew of the existence of. Look over the stacks and see what catches your fancy. Borrow as many as the library rules will allow, without exceeding the number of books you can reasonably read before their due dates. You can come home with an armload of books—or just the one you were looking for. And you can read it cover to cover in one sitting, or in dribs and drabs as your schedule permits. How on earth can you do that with TV?
Another advantage books have: If you have a doctor appointment and know you’ll be stuck in the waiting room for a while, you can bring along a book to pass the time with. But you could hardly bring along a TV. You can also read a book in such venues as the hairdresser, where you’ll be sitting in a chair for a protracted time if the stylist is giving you anything more than a quick cut and style. (Perm? Color? Bring along a book!)
Yes, books have it all over TV in a variety of ways. Have you read a book lately? Buy one, borrow one from the library, or raid your own bookshelf, then prepare to settle in for some major enjoyment.