Posted by Jeanna Foti, Fiction Reader for issue 4.2
My roommate once told me, “I’d rather watch a movie than read a book.” And immediately I thought, really?! A book has so much more to offer than a movie does. But I know mine isn’t the popular opinion. Everyone these days seems to have a cell phone and it’s hard to find a college student who doesn’t own a laptop. In a world where every college student seems to have a Netflix account, literature has been pushed to the side and forgotten.
While Netflix has made it easier to binge watch a TV series, there is still something about literature that, in my opinion, can be even greater than a TV show. When reading a book, you create a little universe inside your mind using just the words on the page. It’s an experience unique to you. You’re using your imagination to picture the story you are reading and taking an active role in creating it. This aspect is one of the things I love about reading; it allows you as the reader to have a say in how you see the story.