movies / books / rods

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Cabal wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/38636>:

<< The experience of reading a book, of becoming personally and deeply
involved with characters and stories in the sort of detail you simply
can't have with a film. A book allows you to see and interpret in a
way a film never can, you have the director, actor, screenwriter,
editor, producer and composer all in between you and the experience,
all manipulating your experience. With a book it's just you and the
author. >>

I rarely see movies, but it doesn't make sense to me that just because
a movie is a collaborative product made by a whole bunch of people
would prevent the viewer from being 'personally and deeply involved
with characters and stories'. Are the Ellery Queen mysteries less
involving than Agatha Christie mysteries because the Ellery Queen
series was written by a duo?

Still, movies are shorter than novels. A normal length movie covers as
much territory as a long short story or short novella, or sometimes
only as much as a regular length short story. Would that length make a
difference to how involving it is?

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/38668>:

<< wishing that kids these days could get lost in books the way
she used to >>

Maybe they can. They made Harry Potter a best seller before adults
discovered it.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/38681>:

<< I don't remember what a rod is (unless we're talking about rods and
cones!) >>

A rod is a unit of measure that we inherited from the Saxons in
England. A furlong is the length of a ploughed furrow = ten rods, and
eight furlongs make a mile. An acre is the amount one man can plow in
one day, which is one furlong times IIRC four rods. Then I think there
are four rods to the chain, and 66 feet to the chain...