I was going to make the same analogy. In our video-dominated society in which people are far less well-read than previously, anyone who reads is already a bit of an intellectual. But in theirs, there were no movies or TV to escape into, but they did have novels for entertainment. If you wanted to educate yourself, you might read history or philosophy. For spiritual guidance, you could pick up Fordyce's sermons and there were probably hundreds of others of like ilk. With standards like those, it's no wonder that novel reading was considered low-brow.