Letters to the Editor: If you binge watch TV, you have time to read a ‘long’ book
Wednesday
Nov 25, 2007 at 12:01 AM
Binge-watching TV is a guilty pleasure, and a good way for people to escape from their everyday lives when they have a little too much time on their hands. You feel like you’re in an escape room or a game show on TV, and everything comes together – the clues, the answers, the puzzle pieces, the prize – and then it just stops and you have to start all over again.
The problem is that the average book is probably 1,000 pages long and a TV show is 2 to 4 hours. So how can you get through two or more hours of TV that is really nothing?
First thing we must recognize is that if you watch TV in the daytime and read during the evening, you will not be able to get through to your end without breaking a sweat. Secondly, TV is designed to entertain you for the time that it takes to watch the shows you’re interested in. It is not designed to allow you to actually sit down and read or go to sleep and watch the rest of the program after it is over.
So don’t be surprised when a lot of the books you read in the evening are not long enough, or the ones you’ve read in the daytime are too long. The good news is that the “long” books are usually not the books you’ll be forced to read again, as television programs are scheduled to end at 10:00 p.m.; TV programs are not “long”, they are short, and they are meant to be watched in one sitting.
The book you are currently reading can be “long” for a particular television program, but if you never watch TV at all, then it will be “short” for you now, as it is now. But don’t despair, just go back and read to make it “longer”. The more you read, the more of the book you will be able