I've noticed that the books everyone raved about in my book club often leave me cold, and the ones I find profound never make the mainstream lists. When we say a novel is "great literature," are we really measuring its artistic merit, or just the taste of critics and the market? A friend recently argued that popularity is irrelevant to value, but I've seen too many brilliant, obscure works to believe that—and too much forgettable bestseller sludge. Can we truly separate the worth of a story from how widely it's read and celebrated, or does cultural reception actually shape what we even consider to be literature?