Even with Tuesdays off while I was taking two classes for the May/June term, it was still so much work for eight whole weeks that I’m having a hard time letting go of the stress. Evenings are long, boring, and empty now. No worries though, I’m sure I’ll have relaxation down pat just as it’s time to start another class again. During audit season. And harvest-time. And birthdays-Thanksgiving-Christmas.

There is no such thing as balance.

A co-worker today caught me walking-and-reading on my way to the gym for a 10-minute break, and told me that he had heard somewhere that Edith Wharton’s mother wouldn’t let Edith read a book until she, the mother, had read and approved it. I told him it made sense to me: my parents did that with movies. He said movies are one thing, but books are another. I told him that books are worse. He gave me a “yeah, whatever” look, but I didn’t have time to explain myself because it was a workplace conversation. Office conversations with members of other departments cannot pass the 30-second mark. There’s a law about that somewhere.

But books are worse, and I spent a slow afternoon accumulating my reasoning. Superficially, there are a couple of obvious items. First, books allow you time to stop and think. Movies, especially modern movies, do not give you many places to pause and ponder. But with a book, you can go back, re-read, and spend as much time analyzing and digesting as you would like, without missing anything.

Second, less is more. Movies - again, especially modern ones - are over-the-top, crazy jam-packed with sound, images, violence, and “adult situations.” Movies don’t leave any room for the viewer. Books are quieter, with lots of space that you need to fill in for yourself. Not only does this mean that you contribute more to the experience, but what you contribute means more to you. Reading is a much more intimate, visceral experience than movie-watching.

Then there is the most important reason, the primary reason why books are dangerous: imagination. The unknown, the unseen, that which is the most vaguely perceived or felt, is far more powerful than anything tangible. Do you remember the terror you experienced during your last nightmare? Have you ever felt anything approaching that in your waking life? There probably wasn’t anything obvious in that dream to make it so frightening; more likely, your dreaming self perceived an undefined “something” in your dream, and precisely because it was an undefined and generalized “something,” it made your heart pound in your throat, made your flesh sweat, and left you gasping for air even after you awoke.

And that is why books are dangerous. They leave room for the indefinite. I started reading the “greats” when I was far too young to grasp anything but the individual words; that is not to say that I was too young to be affected by those themes that I could not even begin to imagine. You are what you read. It seeps into you, infects your mind, and shapes your thoughts beyond your ability to measure. That’s why I re-read every “children’s” book I send to my niece before I pack it up.

Because books are far more dangerous than movies. And you can’t be too careful.