A person walked into the bookshop recently. Coat still wet from rain. They moved
with the half-hesitant energy of someone who is not entirely convinced they belong.
They drifted toward the crime shelves first, fingertips grazing spines without taking a
single book fully down. Then they walked toward the till, empty-handed. Before a
word was spoken, their body apologised. Shoulders curled. Voice quietly lowered.
Eyes fixed on the counter rather than on me.
A posture that told me: I think I am about to be judged.
“I feel silly asking… but do you have that crime novel everyone was talking about? I
know it is not exactly serious. I just want something light.”
They apologised twice before revealing anything about the book. Not for uncertainty,
but for their taste. As if they needed permission to choose pleasure.
There is always a pause before the title. Three seconds where a reader gives me
time to react, to approve, to disapprove, before they risk naming something they fear
is unworthy.
In those seconds, I can hear the script they have already internalised:
“I know I should read something proper.”
“It is probably too commercial.”
“This is embarrassing.”
What is running through someone’s mind then is not about a novel. It is about
identity. It is about belonging. It is about the fear of being seen as less.
The core question inside that silence is this:
If I tell you what I really enjoy, will you think I am stupid?
When I handed the customer the book and said, “Readers adore this. You will have a
great time with it,” their entire shape changed. Shoulders released. Breath out. A
visible loosening, as if they believed, for the first time, that joy did not require
justification.
Reading has never been neutral. It has a long history as a gate.
For most of human history, books were accessible only to the powerful. Clergy.
Aristocrats. Scholars. Literacy itself was rationed. To read was to belong to a ruling
class. That legacy is still with us.
Film and music began as public culture. Open to all. Books did not. The book is still
treated like a key to status, and readers are treated as if they must prove they
deserve to hold it.
Reading signals education.
Reading signals virtue.
Reading separates.
When someone reveals what they read, they reveal something interior. We have
turned books into confession.
And only books have formal institutions that instruct us on what counts. There is no
Nobel Prize for box sets. There is no Pulitzer for playlists. There are, however,
canons, syllabi, and critics for literature. That machinery tells us which books are
worthy and which are simply consumed.
This system is not abstract. Real people and real incentives uphold it.
Literary prize committees define what is serious. Broadsheet critics define what
deserves attention. Academic syllabi define what literature is. Publishers define
which authors receive prestige packaging, launch budgets, and the campaigning
needed to win prizes.
They gain prestige, identity, and power. If everything counts, then nothing is special.
Scarcity is the mechanism that keeps them relevant.
Even places that should be sanctuaries for every kind of reader often reinforce the
very shame that keeps people outside.
Look at our highstreet bookshops. Tables stacked with literary fiction. Prize winners
face-out. A sanctified altar of Important Books. Meanwhile, the books most people
actually read are spine-out at the back, or relegated to a corner with apologetic
signage like “holiday reads.”
We claim to want readers on the high street, yet we visually teach them that their
taste is second-class.
Is it any wonder that so many now buy commercial fiction online, where no one sees
and no one judges?
Readers are not avoiding bookshops because they do not love books. They are
avoiding bookshops because they do not love how books make them feel inside
those walls.
Romance exposes the truth behind this hierarchy. It is primarily written by women,
mainly bought by women, and it is dismissed because anything associated with
women is treated as unserious.
Romance is read for joy. For comfort. For fantasy. For escape. And we distrust
pleasure that does not require labour. Thrillers can contain murder and be praised.
Romance can contain desire and be laughed at.
Romance keeps publishing alive, yet its power remains invisible because
acknowledging it would require admitting that the cultural centre is not the Booker
shortlist. It is the person in bed at midnight choosing chapter sixteen over sleep.
When someone says audiobooks do not count, they are not defending literacy. They
are defending a ladder.
Science is unequivocal. In 2019, neurological research showed that the brain
recognises and processes language almost identically whether read or heard. A
meta-analysis of 46 studies confirmed that reading is comparable to listening in
terms of comprehension.
Saying audiobooks do not count excludes people with dyslexia, visual impairment,
neurodivergent processing, time scarcity, and exhaustion. It is exclusion disguised as
purity.
If this hierarchy is to fall, the first lever is simple.
A major national newspaper must commit to reviewing commercial and genre fiction
every single week with the same seriousness, length, and placement as literary
fiction.
Not seasonal roundups. Not guilty pleasures. Permanent parity.
The second lever is symbolic but seismic. A major bookshop crowns a commercial
novel as its Book of the Year and treats it as a cultural event.
Imagine that author on a stage usually reserved for prize winners. That single act
would change who believes they belong.
The third lever is language. Readers must stop apologising. Booksellers must stop
labelling. We must replace “It is just light” with “This mattered to me.”
If you have ever lowered your voice before naming a book you love, I want you to
know this:
You do not have to earn the right to read.
Whatever puts life back in you, whatever keeps you turning pages when the world is
heavy, whatever gives you five quiet minutes of escape or hope or laughter, that is
enough.
You are a reader because you read. Full stop. There is no exam. No judge. No purity
test.
Books are not a ladder. They are a door. And you already have the key.
Your joy is valid. Your taste is valid. You belong. Not someday, once you have
finished the classics. Now.
Because the truth no hierarchy wants admitted is this:
Reading is a relationship. And relationships are not measured. They are felt.
If a story makes you feel alive, then you are already doing it right.
