/lit/ - Literature

>>20130383
Books are essentially just tools, so It'd most likely be up to the individual how they use those tools.
You could buy books for no other purpose than because they look good on a shelf. You could read a few books that are trendy and easy to digest so you have something to discuss with other people. You could pick out authors with opinions and viewpoints as close to yours as possible, and then read their works so as to feel better about you having those opinions and viewpoints in the first place. You could read enough about a given subject, be it philosophy, physics, psychology, chemistry, or whatever you like, to become an expert on it. Or, you could just read for personal enjoyment, following whatever piques your interest at any moment in time.
With regards to "famous authors", there's often a reason why they became famous in the first place. I'm sure if you jumped into reading Dostoevsky for no other reason than to gain e-clout and argue on the internet, you could very well achieve that. However, if you jumped into reading Dostoevsky because you want to gain insight into his place and time, or perhaps to relate to his writings which often still ring true today, you could achieve that also.
So to answer your question, "are books a cope?" Only if you want them to be, nigger.