Nelson Mandela once said, “Be a lifelong student. Read as many books as possible.”
Note that he didn’t attach conditions and he didn’t rank genres nor did he appoint guards at the gate of literature. Yet somehow, along the way, a group I like to call the literary police showed up, armed with disgusting opinions, measuring tapes for intellect and a very narrow idea of what reading is supposed to look like.
According to them, fiction readers are daydreamers. We are escapists. Ordinary people who should not dare call themselves bibliophiles. A real reader, they insist, is one who consumes knowledge-filled books, self-help manuals, productivity guides, and texts that promise growth in bullet points. I have a problem with that.
Who decided that joy disqualifies intelligence? Who said imagination does not count as learning? Personally, I would choose fiction every time. Not because I want to avoid growth but because fiction is growth just delivered differently.
In fiction, you don’t just learn about courage; you feel it. You don’t read a chapter titled How to Be Resilient; you walk beside characters who survive impossible things. You don’t get told how the world works, you experience it through voices, cultures, and lives you may never otherwise encounter.
Fiction sharpens the mind quietly. It stretches empathy. It enriches vocabulary, teaches rhythm, tone, and storytelling, the very bones of good writing. It holds mirrors to society and windows to other realities, all while entertaining you.
And yes, fiction is an escape. But escape is not weakness. Sometimes it is survival and sometimes it is rest. Other times, it is how we return to the real world with more understanding than we had before. Not all knowledge wears a serious face. Definitely not all growth comes with a checklist.
So let the literary police all over X and Facebook keep their rules. I’ll be over here, turning pages that make me feel alive, learning in ways that don’t need permission, because reading is not a competition.
A bibliophile is simply someone who loves books and love, in any form, does not require justification.