Greysuitcase - Read a Bad Book or Watch a Bad Movie

Sometimes ago, I did a poll on my Instagram asking my followers which one would they rather do, read a bad book or watch a bad movie (and why). The result was 25% of people who voted would rather read a bad book while the other 75% would rather watch a bad movie.

I also got some response on the reason why from the people who rather watch a bad movie. One person said “Movie is easier because it moves and you’re forced to move along, unlike a book where you can’t get past a bad page. I’ve watched a lot of bad movies but I haven’t finished a lot of bad books,” and another person said “Movies are usually a shorter investment time-wise than reading a book”.

(Text version is under the image)

I personally rather watch a bad movie as well. On top of the two previous reasons, with movie, I can always fast forward to skip the boring part or watch it in 1.5x or 2x speed to get it over with. 😆

Or if the plot is bad but the cinematography is good, at the very least I can learn how certain scene is lit and shot.

With books, if the writing is bad, I can hardly pass the first couple of pages, let alone finish the whole thing. The writing style and the plot need to be interesting enough to keep me hooked. Plus since there’s no visual with books, if the writing and plot are bad, then that’s it for me.

For the 25% of you who voted for this, curious to know why would you prefer a bad book rather than a bad movie?

Now that I think about it, reading a bad book can probably be compensated with your own good imagination maybe? If you visualize the words way better in your head, perhaps the story won’t be as bad as it is in words? 😆

Also, I devoured a lot of books when I was younger and I think that also made me a little bit picky about what I read later on because some books are just too predictable, unrelatable (even if it’s a fiction, I want my fiction to be somewhat realistic) or some books are just plainly bad and I can’t bring myself to finish it.

In any case, whether it’s a bad book or a bad movie, the one thing that I CAN stand is probably listening to people who review or recap these bad books or movies in their own words and make them fun (part of it is also probably because I can do other stuff while listening to these reviews so it doesn’t feel like my time is wasted since I can still be productive).

If you don’t already know, there’s a whole genre of this kind of videos on Youtube.

The first channel I found a couple of years ago and started binge watching (hearing actually, since I usually listen to her while editing) was probably @KennieJD who usually talks about bad movies that she watched in a self-proclaimed series called “Bad Movies & A Beat” where she does her story telling while doing her makeup.

Almost all the movies that she reviewed are bad and I would probably never watch in real life, but she’s funny so it’s entertaining to hear her comments about the movies. She now does recaps/reviews on reality shows too which is also pretty fun.

My next find was Stephanie Soo’s channel @MissMangoButt “Baking a Mystery” series where she retells and reviews thriller/mystery/horror movies and books. Usually the good ones, but there are some not so good books/movies that she reviewed. The script (if there’s any) is very well-written and she’s very expressive so listening to her telling the story is very fun.

I actually know her initally as a mukbang Youtuber, but then my sister told me that she started a true crime story channel called Rotten Mango (@rottenmangopod) and I should check it out.

I did and I love it. She talks about true crime cases that are pretty well scripted and well researched and she’s a pretty great story teller overall.

Rotten Mango also has its podcast on Spotify which have more episodes than the Youtube channel. She put up cases that have more explicit and gruesome details on the podcast. So if you want to listen to more episodes, definitely head to Spotify.

After I discovered Rotten Mango, it led me to her other channels, @MissMangoButt and @StephanieSoo where she talks about lighter, non-crime related topics such as celebrities’ real-life dramas. Most of her recent topics have revolved around Asian celebrities/public figures and I gotta say, I learned a lot of new things about Chinese public figures’ recent dramas from her stories. Very entertaining.