Funnily enough my taste for escapism has only gotten stronger as I’ve aged. I’ve always been a fantasy/sci-fi reader but as I get older (I’m in my 30’s) I find I want that escapism more and more. Like you said, ‘I get enough reality from the real world’. The real world is a shit place right now for a multitude of reasons and the last thing I want is to be reminded of that in my relax time. That’s the great thing about books though, there’s something out there to suit everyone’s tastes.

If you consume novels it counts. Audiobooks count, what you said counts, it all counts. Can we move past the gatekeeping BS of whether or not something counts as ‘real’ reading.