[Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash]
7 April, 2026 (Tuesday) – By Lea Frey
There is a particular kind of knowledge that takes time to earn. It cannot be skimmed, summarized in a caption, or consumed between notifications. It requires patience, discomfort, and the willingness to sit with complexity. For centuries, that knowledge lived inside classic literature: works like To Kill a Mockingbird, Crime and Punishment, and 1984, books that grapple with moral weight, the surveillance state, and the nature of guilt. Today, it is quietly disappearing from the places that once guaranteed its survival.
According to the NEA’s 2022 Survey, the percentage of adults who read at least one book in the past year has fallen from 54.6% a decade ago to 48.5%. Among younger readers, the erosion is more pronounced. Only 14% of 13-year-olds reported reading for fun almost every day in 2023, compared to 27% in 2012. These are not simply statistics about reading habits. They are a measure of what a generation is no longer encountering: the moral weight of Atticus Finch, the surveillance state of Orwell’s Oceania, the grief and guilt of Raskolnikov.
The Rise of Fast Fiction and What It Displaces
Fast fiction is a loose term for the genre novels that now dominate bestseller lists: high-stakes romances, trope-driven fantasy worlds, and stories built for speed and immediate gratification. The genre is not new, but its reach has expanded dramatically. Publishing industry data shows romance and fantasy sales surged by over 30% between 2020 and 2023, driven in large part by BookTok, TikTok’s sprawling literary community, which has reshaped the reading landscape in ways both useful and troubling.
Although BookTok introduced books to new readers during a period of widespread decline, the genre it lifted to dominance tells a specific story. The books that dominate the BookTok scene are often high-stakes romances, trope-driven fantasy worlds, and stories that unfold at a rapid pace, mirroring a trend that prioritizes speed over substance and immediate gratification over a slower journey.
This is not a moral failing on the part of readers. It is, in large part, a structural one. TikTok demands short-form content, forcing users to engage with their audiences in a snappy, concise manner or risk losing their attention. Hence, content creators recommending books are compelled to make their recommendations quickly, often organizing them around tropes and aesthetics that readers are already familiar with. In that environment, Middlemarch does not stand a chance against a dragon romance.
What concerns researchers is not just what readers are choosing, but what they are no longer being trained to read. A specific concern is whether literary texts might be further marginalized by the algorithm, raising the barrier to such texts even in educational settings, a phenomenon linked to what researchers call “binge-reading,” where readers repeatedly consume the same type of texts because the algorithm continues to recommend them. The result is a narrowing, not an expansion, of what literature can do.
A Shrinking Presence in Schools
The classroom was once the last reliable place a young person would encounter a classic. That, too, is under pressure. During the 2024-2025 school year, nearly 4,000 books were targeted by public school library bans, bringing the total to nearly 23,000 public school book bans enacted since 2021. Among the titles removed from school shelves in recent years: George Orwell’s 1984, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, and a graphic edition of The Diary of Anne Frank. Separately, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men was removed from the Welsh GCSE syllabus from September 2025.
A trend is that the majority of books being banned are works of classic literature. The arguments for removal vary, and some are not without merit. If taken at face value, classical literature certainly appears problematic in current society’s attempts at equality for marginalized groups. But this approach misses why studying classic literature is important, and essentially dismisses the value of historical awareness, which includes lessons that are often crucial for young people and adults alike. To remove a text because it reflects its era is to misunderstand the purpose of reading it in the first place.
What is striking, however, is the counter-movement these removals have provoked. George Orwell’s 1984 saw sales jump by 63% after President Donald Trump’s re-election in November 2024. The novel follows a totalitarian government that rewrites history, surveils its citizens, and criminalises dissent. Trump’s own presidency has drawn similar comparisons, with executive orders targeting DEI programmes, ongoing attacks on press freedom, and the withdrawal from international agreements. Around the same time, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale also surged up the bestseller list. Readers, it turns out, reach for classic literature precisely when the world most resembles it.
What Only Classics Can Offer
To be considered a classic, a book must continue to be read and remain relevant over time, demonstrate literary and artistic quality, and carry cultural significance. It must also resonate with audiences spanning generations, carry universal themes all readers can relate to, and offer challenging ideas throughout. On the other hand, fast fiction is not built to those standards, and the distinction matters in ways that go beyond aesthetics.
Classic literature has always functioned as a mirror, one that distorts just enough to make the familiar visible. Orwell’s warning about government surveillance and propaganda has become increasingly relevant in the age of digital technology and social media. The themes that made 1984 uncomfortable in 1949 are the same ones that make it indispensable in 2026.
That staying power is not coincidental. To be considered a classic, a book must continue to be read and remain relevant over time, demonstrate literary and artistic quality, and carry cultural significance. It must also resonate with audiences spanning generations, carry universal themes all readers can relate to, and offer challenging ideas throughout. Fast fiction is not built to those standards, and the distinction matters in ways that go beyond aesthetics.
The language of classic literature also offers measurable cognitive benefits. These texts challenge the reader with complex vocabulary and intricate sentence structures, unlike the more straightforward language found in contemporary popular fiction. This linguistic complexity encourages cognitive development, improving memory, analytical skills, and empathy. None of that comes from a book engineered to be finished in a weekend.
There is also the question of cultural inheritance. Classic literature functions like source code beneath modern storytelling. From Marvel superhero arcs to Netflix productions, today’s entertainment draws its structure, archetypes, and emotional logic from the works that came before it. To lose fluency in the classics is to lose the ability to understand where the stories we tell now come from, and what they are quietly saying.
Still Holding
Classic literature has never been an easy sell. It demands more of its readers than fast fiction does: more patience, more discomfort, more willingness to sit with ideas that do not resolve neatly. It refuses to resolve its tensions cleanly. It sits in historical contexts that require work to understand. But that difficulty is precisely the point. The works that have endured, Austen, Achebe, Dostoevsky, Morrison, did so not because they were comfortable, but because they refused to be disposable.
The question is not whether classics are still relevant. The evidence suggests they become more relevant as the world grows more chaotic. The question is whether enough people will still know how to read them. That is a question worth taking seriously, because a literature that is never read cannot speak, no matter how much it still has to say.
Lea Frey
Grade 10
International School of Ho Chi Minh City
Written on March 18, 2026 (Wednesday)
