Even books read for pleasure shouldn’t have to dumb down their grammar and writing style. There are plenty of comic books/graphic novels with better writing than the Twilight Saga (for example). By “learning something” I don’t mean you have to read non-fiction books to learn about history and what not. But books like Twilight, which are written with no sense of story structure, word usage, or proper grammar in some places, are beyond harmful.

She’s a shit writer whose style appeals to people who people who can’t tell the difference because they barely paid attention in English class and don’t care to.

If you want an example of the other direction, Harry Potter is a series that appeals to young people, but are well written and actually inspire kids to read because it challenges them to get better at handling good writing.

I’m not “gate keeping” anything. I’m saying the writer has an obligation to enrich people, regardless of whether it’s reading for fun or reading for learning.

“Literature” comes from Latin, and it originally meant “the use of letters” or “writing.” But when the word entered the Romance languages that derived from Latin, it took on the additional meaning of “knowledge acquired from reading or studying books.” So we might use this definition to understand “Literature with a Capital L” as writing that gives us knowledge–writing that should be studied.

Knowledge and intellect is legit in the literature definition?

So essentially literature can’t be “gate keeping” it is what it is. It’s just do you want to study it and gain knowledge / intellect - or nah?