Yes, but long ago literary fiction was considered as mind-rotting a waste of time as t.v. is now, and it usually was. Even Tolstoy, in war and peace, poked fun at one his characters' reading, with a sense of doing something important. Think it was Nikolai, in the epilogue.

I believe that one can read or watch t.v. in an alert and critical way, or in a lazy way. There's just more better books.

Things that are obviously fun and entertaining and only glancingly take on any real issues are much healthier, I think, than countless puffed-up "great" books.

I've held off several days, but, Blackcatter, I take it you're a roads scholar.