I really like books and movies. I don't read that many books and I don't see that many movies. People who know me know that is true. I do tend to talk about books and movies a good bit, especially ones that have moved me or intrigued me. I know more about books, so I like some books because they are so very well written. I don't know enough about movies to know whether they are well-made or not, so I just see the ones that interest me.
I do tend to read a few books over and over and I see a few movies over and over. I can't justify that. It's what I like. I would like to explain it, though. Let's start with the obvious and since what I have to say here is true equally about books and movies, I'll refer only to the books. The obvious truth is that you can't read a book for the first time more than once. Things you didn't know about that world or those characters or that plot are things you learn. Now you know them. The next time you read that book, you take those for granted (or maybe you just appreciate them more, but you don't discover them again) and you learn "the next things." You learn what is now on the surface, though it was hidden from you on your first pass. And the next time, you learn the layer below that, the one that is now on the surface.
You see how that goes. The book is changed for you by your reading it. If it is a good book, you are changed as well by the act of reading it. Every now and then, I hear someone talk about The Lord of the Rings. He has just read it. Once. Part of me celebrates his experience. How wonderful that you have read such a good book! But part of me thinks he has only begun; that the next time, he will find a book that is familiar to him and also a book he has never read before. Wait till he finds out that Aragorn was careful never to use the intimate "thee" with Eowyn until Eowyn has fallen in love with Faramir. Always before, it is "you." I went back to make sure.
That's true of movies too, although I suspect that my lack of training or lack of talent (choose one) leads me to "discover" on the sixth viewing things that the director thinks he laid on the surface to titillate first-time viewers. The last three movies I have gotten into deeply are I, Robot, The Joneses, and Remember the Titans. I'm a very visual person, so there are movies I can't afford to see. I don't find embarrassment funny so there are movies I don't want to see. Then there are movies I don't care about, no matter how good they are. But movies like The Secret in Their Eyes and Invictus are about something that matters to me---the former, by my lights about life imprisonment and the latter about forgiveness.
I feel strongly that I ought to read books and see movies with my own interests in mind. My thinking runs easily to analogies--I am past apologizing for it--and I read (again treating both movies and books by referring just to books) with those analogies in mind. Quite a few of the analogies come from the Bible, so one event makes me think of the burning bush Moses confronted (The Last Starfighter) and one of the fundamental dilemma of sin (The Matrix) and the redemption that results from the ultimate obedience to the demands of the quest (The Lord of the Rings). I do not make the claim for any of those that I have understood what the author is saying; only that this is the way I have understood what I was reading.
I also view strategically (I'll use movies to stand for both this time). When I know a movie, I like to go back to it and contrast one scene with another. Some scenes are just fun to see. "Wild Thing" Ricky Vaughn coming out of the bullpen in Major League, striding in time to the music he can not hear; the extra crewman expressing his distaste for intergalactic lovemaking in Galaxy Quest. But many more express themes--I say they are themes, who knows if they are themes to anyone else--so that a line that seems casual in scene two, seems very revealing in scene seven. KC, in The Joneses, knows what she means when she admonishes Steve Jones, "How far are you willing to go to get what you want?" But when Steve knows, very late in the movie, what he really wants, he is willing to go far enough to destroy the stealth marketing unit KC has created. The two lines are a long way apart, but now—having seen the movie so many times— I see them as bookends and I take great pleasure it them.
So I choose with my interests in mind and I read/view with my interests in mind. That sounds pretty focused to me. Thank goodness for the Bookies. I have been in the same book group since the fall of 1983. We nominate the year’s reading in August and make the final choices (it amounts to a series of primary elections) in September. We choose books that I would never choose and I read them. Very often, I am glad I did and those books lead to other books, which lead to yet other books and, occasionally, to movies.
