Escape Fiction

Read recently: the distinction between "escape fiction" and "literary texts". Escape fiction is what you read for pleasure. It's pretty much all I read until the end of high school (with a few notable exceptions). Then I read _How to Read and Why_ by Harold Bloom, which convinced me of the merits of reading more challenging literary material and sent me on a classic-book-buying spree that lasted several years.
"Escape fiction, for example, enables us to get away temporarily from the pressures and responsibilities of our everyday lives and just to relax. (My own choice for escape literature is science fiction, mysteries, and horror stories.) Unlike escape fiction, literary texts make rigorous demands on us because they explore meaningful themes such as our relationship to God, justice/injustice, or the nature of love, so that our understanding of ourselves and our relationships to others, to society and to God are deepened and our lives enriched. Most college students have the reading skills needed for escape fiction and simpler texts, but they don't necessarily have the skills for reading classic literary texts."
--from a course on Modern English Literature I found online here: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/