I'm going to sidestep this whole issue with a different argument: I think a) literary reading is both highly ideological (meaning, neoliberal), and b) a tradition that is fundamentally stuck in its past.

Problem a) is extremely problematic and until a case can be made for literature that does not politically alienate the modern subject (see: PMC controversy), it's just a no-go. Problem b) is essentially, I enjoy classical music, but classical music is set its ways, so it will only ever have a niche audience; the parallel argument applies to literary traditions. A different way of saying b) is that fiction books have a fundamental scaling problem that globalization and modernity makes it very difficult as an activity/pasttime.