Quite honestly, the Slate article reminded me of my tenth grade English teacher who thought I should stop reading fantasy and start reading something worthy like biographies. (This went so nicely with the fact that she was the only high school teacher who gave people gold stars and had people apply for exciting jobs like paper-passer-outer. The combination of treating us like we were in elementary school and deriding books I enjoyed was not a good one. She was not among my favorites, as I'm sure you can imagine.)

If people like to read, why stop them? I really don't enjoy reading most of the gloomy books of the literary canon, and I don't really want my hobby to become work. I spend quite enough time working, thank you.