Reading for Pleasure Is Rebellion: Here's Why It Makes You Dangerous

Photo by Elevae Visuals

I've been thinking a lot about control lately.

Not the obvious kind—not book burnings or libraries being defunded, though those are happening too. I've written before about how governments use banned books to control people, how suppressing literature makes populations more susceptible to propaganda. But there's something even more insidious happening right under our noses.

What happens when people can read... but don't?

Here's a stat that keeps me up at night: 40% of Americans didn't read a single book in 2025. Not one. And 54% of adults read below a sixth-grade level. We're not talking about people who can't access books—we're talking about a literacy crisis that's making us vulnerable to exactly the kind of manipulation I was worried about with banned books.

Because right now, we have leaders literally telling us to reject the evidence of our eyes and ears. That's straight from Orwell's 1984, by the way. The party's final, most essential command. And I keep watching people get confused about what's real and what's propaganda, and I realized: this isn't just about banning books anymore.

This is about what it actually means to be literate. And how we can use reading—especially fiction—to build cognitive resistance against people who want to control how we think.

The Five Levels of Literacy (And Why Half of America Is Stuck at Level 2)

When I started researching this, I thought literacy was pretty straightforward: either you can read or you can't, right?

Wrong.

The government defines five levels of literacy, and when you see what they actually measure, it becomes clear why half the country is struggling to spot propaganda. At Level 1, you can locate the expiration date on your driver's license or find a single piece of information in a sports article. Basic stuff. At Level 2, you can interpret appliance warranty instructions or use a street map. Still pretty simple.

Level 3 is where it gets interesting—and where 54% of American adults fall below. At this level, you should be able to write a brief letter explaining a credit card billing error, use a bus schedule to get to work on time, or figure out a discount on your insurance bill. These aren't complex tasks, but they require reading comprehension that goes beyond just recognizing words on a page.

Level 4 means you can explain the difference between two employee benefits packages or calculate change from a menu. And Level 5—the highest level—means you can compare and summarize different legal approaches during a trial, evaluate credit cards using table data, or compute costs for a home improvement project.

Here's what terrifies me: if more than half of us struggle with Level 3 tasks, how are we supposed to compare politicians' actual policy positions? How do we spot when someone's using subtext to say something they won't say directly? How do we recognize when a "news" article is actually propaganda? How do we understand the difference between correlation and causation?

And here's the kicker: the counties with the lowest literacy rates are the same areas experiencing the worst health outcomes, deepest poverty, and lowest economic mobility. When you can't read well, you can't advocate for yourself. You can't spot when someone's lying to you. You can't escape systems designed to keep you exactly where you are.

This is how control works. You don't need to ban books if people can't understand them in the first place. You don't need to suppress literature if people aren't reading at all. The result is the same: a population that can't think critically, can't spot manipulation, and can't resist propaganda.

Why Fiction Makes You Better at Spotting Propaganda Than Nonfiction

I need to address the fiction snobs because honestly, they're part of the problem.

You know the type. "I only read TRUE stories." "Fiction is a waste of time." "Nonfiction is more valuable because it's real."

It's garbage, and it's also completely wrong according to actual research. People who regularly read fiction show higher levels of empathy and social intelligence compared to those who only read nonfiction. They're better at understanding other people's perspectives, recognizing emotional nuance, navigating complex social situations—all skills we desperately need right now.

A Psychology Today article put it perfectly: "Imagination is not merely an indulgence. It is a fundamental cognitive ability that allows us to hypothesize, innovate and problem solve."

When you read nonfiction, you're learning through facts. When you read fiction, you're learning through imagination—and that's not less valuable. It's essential. Because fiction teaches you things that nonfiction can't.

Fiction teaches you to recognize unreliable narrators—you know, like politicians who give you their version of events while conveniently leaving out crucial details. It teaches you to understand subtext, to hear what people mean versus what they actually say. It teaches you to catch allusions to historical events, those coded references that leaders use when they want to signal something to their base without saying it outright. It teaches you to follow complex narratives with competing perspectives, to hold contradictions in your mind simultaneously, to question the story you're being told.

These aren't just nice skills for writers or English majors. These are survival skills when you're living under leaders who want to manipulate you.

I had a friend who insisted she wasn't a reader. "I've tried," she told me. "It's just not for me." But I had this feeling she just hadn't found her thing yet, so I pushed back a little. Turns out she loves romance novels—like, absolutely devours them. There's this adorable bookstore here in Nashville called Novelette that specializes in romance, and now she's there constantly, tearing through books, fully obsessed.

She didn't need "serious literature" or classic Russian novels or whatever people think counts as "real reading." She just needed permission to read what she actually enjoyed. And guess what? Her brain is building all those critical thinking pathways anyway, because it doesn't matter if you're reading Tolstoy or a beach romance—your brain is still learning to recognize patterns, understand human motivation, think critically about narrative structure.

The genre snobbery isn't just annoying. It's actively harmful because it keeps people from reading altogether.

How Reading Rewires Your Brain to Resist Manipulation

Let's get into the science for a second because this is where it gets really interesting.

Reading creates new neural pathways and strengthens existing ones, especially in areas responsible for language processing and communication. It's literally like weight training for your brain—the more you do it, the stronger those connections become. And unlike some cognitive activities that only activate one or two areas of your brain, reading lights up multiple regions simultaneously: your visual cortex, language centers, temporal and frontal lobes, areas for imagination and concentration, all working together.

This matters because sustained reading improves both memory and focus. You have to remember characters, track plot points, recall context from chapters ago. Your brain has to maintain focus long enough to follow complex ideas through to their conclusion. And right now, when the average attention span has dropped from two and a half minutes to literal seconds, we desperately need to rebuild this capacity.

I saw this woman on Instagram talking about rereading Wuthering Heights, and it's taking her forever. Not because the book is difficult—she read it easily in high school—but because her brain hasn't thought this way in a long time. She's had to retrain herself to sit with complex sentences, to follow intricate plot threads, to engage deeply with text instead of skimming for quick hits of dopamine.

But it's not just about attention span. Reading enhances your analytical skills, your brain's ability to reason through complex information and make connections between disparate ideas. Every time you read, you're practicing the exact cognitive skills you need to spot propaganda, evaluate competing claims, recognize logical fallacies. You're literally building a brain that's harder to manipulate.

And the benefits compound over time. Regular reading builds cognitive reserve, which helps delay the onset of dementia and Alzheimer's symptoms. It reduces stress—just 30 minutes of reading can lower your stress levels as effectively as yoga or meditation. It increases empathy, particularly when you're reading fiction, because you're practicing seeing the world through other people's eyes, understanding motivations and perspectives different from your own.

Reading isn't just about becoming smarter or more informed. It's about building a brain that can resist control.

The Literary Devices Leaders Use to Control You (And How to Recognize Them)

Remember English class? All those literary terms you thought you'd never use in real life?

Here's the thing nobody tells you: those aren't just academic concepts for analyzing novels. They're tools for understanding how people manipulate you in real time.

Take subtext—the underlying meaning beneath what's actually being said. In The Princess Bride, every time Westley says "As you wish," he really means "I love you." It's right there in the subtext, and once you know the code, you can't unhear it. Now think about politicians and leaders who say one thing publicly while clearly communicating something entirely different to their base. Think about the careful word choices, the strategic ambiguity, the things left unsaid that speak louder than what's actually spoken. When you've trained yourself to read subtext in fiction, you start hearing it everywhere in real life.

Or unreliable narrators—storytellers whose credibility is compromised by bias, delusion, or deliberate deception. Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier is a masterclass in this. The narrator tells you his version of events with complete confidence, and only gradually do you realize he's either lying to you or lying to himself, and you have to piece together what actually happened from the gaps and contradictions in his account.

Sound familiar? That's what we're dealing with every single day. Leaders give us their version of events, carefully curated and strategically framed, and we have to figure out what's real and what's been manipulated. If you've never encountered an unreliable narrator in fiction, how would you even know to question the story you're being told?

And allusions—those indirect references to well-known people, places, or events that rely on shared cultural knowledge. Like Aslan in Chronicles of Narnia clearly representing Christ, sacrificed and resurrected. Readers who catch that reference experience the story on a completely different level than those who don't.

I see leaders using allusions constantly, and it's often the most dangerous thing they do. They'll use specific phrases that reference historical ideologies, quote figures associated with atrocities, make "jokes" that aren't actually jokes but signals to people who know what to listen for. They're counting on most people not knowing enough history or literature to catch these references. They're counting on people not reading.

But when you read widely, when you know your history and your literature and your cultural touchstones, you catch them. You recognize when someone's rhetoric mirrors propaganda campaigns from the past. You notice when a speech pattern echoes authoritarian playbooks. You see the patterns that people with lower literacy levels simply can't see.

This is why literacy is resistance. This is why reading matters beyond just enjoying a good story. Every book you read, every literary device you learn to recognize, every narrative structure you internalize—it all becomes part of your cognitive toolkit for navigating a world where people are constantly trying to manipulate how you think and what you believe.

Start Your Reading Resistance Today

So what do we actually do with all this?

First, we read. Whatever interests you, whatever makes you curious, whatever sounds even remotely enjoyable—read it. There's no hierarchy of worthy books. Your brain benefits from a romance novel just as much as it benefits from literary fiction. The goal is to read, period.

If you're not sure where to start, talk to a librarian. They have degrees in this. They're not just book recommenders—they're information specialists whose entire job is connecting people with exactly what they need. And they're on your side.

Revisit books you loved years ago. Rereading is just as valuable as reading something new, sometimes more so because you catch layers you missed the first time, you notice how your own perspective has shifted, you understand things your younger self couldn't see.

Push yourself to try genres outside your comfort zone. I'm not naturally drawn to fantasy, but The Midnight Library by Matt Haig absolutely wrecked me in the best way. Get curious about things that feel unfamiliar. That's where growth happens.

And use your library. Borrow books without guilt. If you don't like something, return it and try something else. No money wasted, no shame, just exploration.

If you're thinking "I don't have time," I need you to hear this: thirty minutes. That's all it takes to start rebuilding those neural pathways, to begin strengthening your analytical skills, to get the stress-reduction benefits. Thirty minutes is less time than most people spend scrolling social media before bed.

Governments and leaders have always understood that literacy is dangerous to their power. That's why they ban books. That's why they underfund education. That's why they're perfectly content with half the population reading below a sixth-grade level. An illiterate population is an easy population to control.

But every time you pick up a book—especially fiction—you're building cognitive resistance. You're strengthening your ability to think critically, recognize manipulation, spot patterns, see through propaganda. You're training your brain to question narratives, understand subtext, catch allusions to dangerous ideologies.

You're making yourself harder to control.

Stephen King says if you're not reading, you don't have the tools to write. But I'd take it further: if you're not reading, you don't have the tools to resist. And right now, resistance isn't just important for writers trying to tell better stories. It's important for anyone who wants to maintain the ability to think for themselves.

So go read something. Anything. Choose pleasure over prestige. Choose curiosity over obligation. Choose what makes you want to turn the page.

Your brain—and your freedom—will thank you.