It has been 105 years since the first prize for literature was awarded. ‘Nobel Prize', named by Alfred Nobel, is being annually awarded since 1901 for the biggest accomplishments in medicine, physics, chemistry, economics, fighting against war and last but not least, in literature. This award consists of a medal, personal diploma and financial prize. The most famous holders of Nobel Prize in literature are Jean-Paul Sartre, Lev Nikolajevič Tolstoj, Anton Pavlovič Čechov, André Gide and so on. In a 2006, the Turkish writer, Orhan Pamuk, won this world-known award. Besides Nobel Prize there exist a great deal of other organizations all over the world, which grant similar awards. For example in Slovakia ‘The Ministry of Culture in the Slovak Republic', ‘BIBIANA', ‘The Slovak National Literary Museum of the Slovak National Library' and many more, they all mind the extraordinary work of young or even older writers and they grant them with cash prizes or some material ones.
Although, to get a literary appraisement is the great compliment but many men of letters write for enjoyments and interests of their readers. I consider Nicholas Sparks, Meg Cabot and J.K. Rowling as my most favorite writers. Nicholas Sparks writes very sensitive novels, and many of them were already filmed - as example ‘The Walk to Remember' and ‘The Notebook'. Meg Cabot likes to write teenager's novels and short stories - ‘The Princess Diaries 1-4', ‘Typical American Girl', ‘The First Son', ‘The Traveling Pants' and so on. I love to read stories, which are similar to my life. I like real places and real characters as well as fake stories made out of nothing more than author's imagination. The great imagination was used while Joanne K. Rowling has been working on her 7 spectacular novels, which became number one books in the World.
I will always find a time to read a good book. Books in general are considered as ‘the man's best friend', because they always were and they always will be here for us. However, nowadays more and more people prefer TV to a book as a source of information.
From my point of view, I know that a movie cannot include all facts and characters in a novel based movie. When I was reading J.K. Rowling's books called ‘Harry Potter and ...' I was pulled and introduced into a life of young boy very clearly and naturally. While I read about some characters in details, in a movie they were only mentioned in a few words, or director even decided to not to mention some of them. Very similarly I felt while reading Meg Cabot's novels ‘Princess Diaries‘. Whereas in a big edition of her books (I read 4 books so far) dad of the main character, Mia, was alive - but divorced and living away from his Princess daughter, in a movie director didn't pay too much attention to this character. After few minutes since the movie started, we found out that Mia's dad was very sick, and that he died because of the cancer. I was amazed how could book based movie differ from the original. And what is more shocking, in a second movie I felt even more unsatisfied because the story was an extremely different than the story in a book number 2. There was almost no similarity between these two mediums, book and a movie.
Accordingly to these facts I think that no matter how many movies we see, they are spoils of these days and we meet them as often as if they are running on an endless band, books will always be a better quality for a demanding story listener/reader from the story point of view or the evolution of characters. But why is it said that ‘Book is the man's best friend'? I think, personally, that it is because book is a friend whom you can chose, it could be with you whenever and wherever you wish to, and it will never say a bad word to you unless you would like to hear it. Book is a friend that will always wait for you at home, on your bookcase, and you can always come back and take it to your hands again and again.
