Speculative fiction has a tendency to be derivative. I think all I need to do is mention Brooks, Goodkind or even Jordan to make that point. Salvatore, Weis & Hickman and the other people who write Dungeons & Dragons novels are doubly derivative. As such, the genre of speculative fiction contains a greater proportion of books that are simply "entertainment" than many other genres. Spy novels, romances and thrillers fall into the same category.

There is nothing wrong with entertainment, even if it is derivative, formulaic and predicable. The point is that typically, the distancing involved in making a book speculative removes the emotional immediacy of the problems presented.

You pointed out, quite rightly, that sometimes removing that emotional immediacy can be a good thing. The Name with No Man brought up this point with respect to discussing racism, and Larry cited the Maus books. However, I don't think that changes the fact that focusing solely on fantasy and science fiction is limiting and monotonous. As I pointed out earlier, this post was a response to the indignation at the thought that the book club might pick something NOT fantasy or sci-fi.

To quickly address a few things you said:

1. I HATE the Brontes' novels and couldn't agree with you more on that point.

2. The Iliad is a classic and has been one for about 2500 years for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, though, the beauty of the poetry is amazing. I got through two chapters in the original Greek before realising how long it would take to read the whole thing (Homeric Greek is archaic and hard to read even if you know classical Greek). Still, I was struck by the beauty of it.