You wander the library, scanning for the fantasy section until at last, you select a book with a beautiful cover. Nestling yourself down in one of the red chairs nearby, you flip open the rough pages. All the while, your heart thrums with glee, excited for an amazing adventure! Will you be constantly kept on your toes? Will the characters intrigue you and prove to be relatable and compelling? Will you be immersed in a world so vivid you can almost smell the flowers yet not too distant from the one you live in? What kinds of moral truths will the story teach? However, as you flip through page after page, your brow furrows in frustration. You can predict everything that happens in the plot. The characters prove boring, bland, and uninteresting, and you lose the connection to the world because it’s not what you’re familiar with. Worse yet, the tale promotes a world where evil is good, displaying witchcraft and other evil magic systems! Eventually, you slam the book closed, quickly reshelving it. As you stalk out of the library, you mutter to yourself, “This was a waste of my time.”

And unfortunately, you encounter more books like these throughout your life.