"I imagine that in the majority of people who are conscious of the wish to live--that is to say, people who have intellectual curiosity--the aspiration to exceed formal programmes takes a literary shape. They would like to embark on a course of reading. Decidedly the British people are becoming more and more literary. But I would point out that literature by no means comprises the whole field of knowledge, and that the disturbing thirst to improve one's self--to increase one's knowledge--may well be slaked quite apart from literature. With the various ways of slaking I shall deal later. Here I merely point out to those who have no natural sympathy with literature that literature is not the only well."

--Arnold Bennett. Annual re-reading of HOW TO LIVE ON 24 HOURS A DAY (available for free on Dailylit) in full effect.

"Novels are excluded from 'serious reading,' so that the man who, bent on self-improvement, has been deciding to devote ninety minutes three times a week to a complete study of the works of Charles Dickens will be well advised to alter his plans. The reason is not that novels are not serious--some of the great literature of the world is in the form of prose fiction--the reason is that bad novels ought not to be read, and that good novels never demand any appreciable mental application on the part of the reader. It is only the bad parts of Meredith's novels that are difficult. A good novel rushes you forward like a skiff down a stream, and you arrive at the end, perhaps breathless, but unexhausted. The best novels involve the least strain.
Now in the cultivation of the mind one of the most important factors is precisely the feeling of strain, of difficulty, of a task which one part of you is anxious to achieve and another part of you is anxious to shirk; and that feeling cannot be got in facing a novel. You do not set your teeth in order to read 'Anna Karenina.'"

--Arnold Bennett, HOW TO LIVE ON 24 HOURS A DAY