And Yet The Books etc

In my line of work, I'm frequently accosted by people who assume that books, and reading, are peripheral activities. That what politicians do is somehow more important; that book pages and book review sections are for journalists to outgrow; that writers do not need to be accorded the same seriousness as, say, economists. I usually get my own back by pointing out that my working day is a) entertaining b) fun c) spent on a comfortable couch d) fun e) uninterrupted by cretins f) did I mention the "fun" bit yet?
The Reading Experience has a far more articulate perspective.
"Books--fiction more specifically--seem trivial in comparison to politics and political awareness only if you've really invested most of your intellectual resources in the notion that political movements and ideas finally determine the degree to which serious engagement with ideas can be made at all, that everything else curious and creative people might find worthwhile must be subordinated to "political critique" or else it's just so much fluff."