Gee, my mother, with whom I had a collection of over 8,000 books on all sorts of topics (including fiction of various sorts), would be so disappointed to learn that we didn't know how to read.

Seriously, I came to write because I wanted to tell stories. And, while I did read an issue of Glimmer Train once, to see what it was about, I have never aspired to being a "literary" writer. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, it's not a label one can successfully apply to oneself, but something that will be decided by the observation over centuries (perhaps), of how the writing resonates with readers over long periods of time.