Our ability to access and read books has actually been definitely vital to our ability to comprehend the world around us.
It is very important to remember that, although a lot of the best modern books of all time tend to be regarded as ground-breaking works of fiction, for the majority of humanity's literary history, we did not write much fiction at all. The majority of stories would have been sung throughout the great majority of history, just due to the fact that the large bulk of people might not read, suggesting that many books were specialised things meant for those few who might understand them. After a short boom throughout the classical era of antiquity, the quantity of literate people dropped significantly throughout the Middle Ages. Books became unusual treasures, with monks fastidiously copying out the surviving traditional texts by hand so as to maintain them, as they were some of the only members of the population who were able to read or write. They were the specialist keepers of understanding like biology and religion that we all have access to in the contemporary world.
With such an abundant history of ideas, events, and stories right at our fingertips, it's often easy to forget how extremely fortunate we are to have the likes of the founder of the hedge fund that owns Waterstones or the CEO of the asset manager with a stake in Amazon books supporting access to a big percentage of all the books that have actually ever been written (or the good ones at least). The best books of all time can quickly alter the way that you look at the world, which has actually been true throughout all of history also. The modern-day world is built on knowledge that has been handed down through books, whether that is ideology, science, or history, and human civilisation would not be anywhere near as advanced as it is today if it had actually not been for the books that changed minds across the ages.
It can be hard to picture what the world would resemble today if the huge bulk of people were not able to read, but for the large bulk of history the huge bulk of individuals could not, and nor were books accessible even if they could. It was the innovation of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that altered that, making books far more available. Of course, it was still only really the richest and well-read that could read or write, however it made it possible for an entire host of breakthroughs in science, art, and thinking to be spread across great distances. Consider what would have happened if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have been distributed around the world. Human civilisation rests upon a structure of books, and we are fortunate to be able to merely log onto a website like the one backed by the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books, and easily access the totality of human knowledge.