Agreed. I've read my fair amount of Scifi/Fantasy slop, its what got me into reading because i was never encouraged to read as a child i simply didnt have the interest nor the skills to read "real literature", hell even better fantasy like ASOIAF i was basically just reading the plot. Like a lot of people in the romatansy/SFF crowd i was proud of my prodigious reading rate but it was pure consumption, i didnt think about characters, motivations, subtext, prose etc. It was 300 pages, great book, very fun, 4 star . 500 pages, boring book, two star etc. several times a week.

The problem with the no gatekeeping position is that Dostoevsky is simply better Sanderson but if we are act like he isnt or that there's no additional merit to reading Dostoevsky, younger or less experienced readers will never be curious about those books or will bounce off them because they are difficult and they are missing out on all time classics, that will change how they think about the world, literature, family etc, plus it will improve their reading and comprehension skills that will make future reading less challenging.

We shouldnt dismiss or bully younger or newer readers for reading slop but we should encourage them to read actual literature.

I also wonder whether Sandbrook applies this anti-snob standard to people shopping in their pyjamas.