my view on Literature

What does LITERATURE means? Does it play any significant role in our lives? What it has to do with our life?

Literature represents what the writer wants to say. It is about anything and everything in this world that portray the reality of life. The characters are fictional of course, but the main idea here is that LITERATURE (from my point of view) is any creative writing that a person writes based on his or her view of reality depicted from his or her view of life. Once, I encountered a phrase saying that literature shows lies about life. Lies because it is in a way that the writer wants how the life should be - the story line, the plot, the characters - all are fictional, the STORY is fictional - A CREATION. However, how does the writer knows what type of story, who are the characters, where and when it should be? It is ALL BASED ON REAL LIFE. Hmm.. don't you think so?

A lot of theories that we can use to read literature. Wait. Let me clear the air. What types of literature that I am talking about? Any stories, poems, dramas and plays that we have read - all the lists that we could find in this world - are all LITERATURE. Let it be the TWILIGHT SAGA, HARRY POTTER series, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE collection and all - ALL are literature. Well, all of us have different purposes of reading. If it is because of entertainment, well...we need not to crack our brain to analyze the story... and if it is because of academic, we NEED to crack our brain to use certain THEORIES to analyze the story. What theories that I am talking about? Let me see... we have post-colonial theory, reader-response theory, psychoanalytic theory, Marxist theory, feminist theory and so on....

Some people who love to read may love literature. Personally, I did love literature and now AM NOT. So sad, non? I have my own way of interpreting the things I read and I know that YOU also have your own way of interpreting the story.

OK. Forget about cracking your brain to interpret a story... let me say this >>> I DISLIKE literature now. But, I LOVE to read. Can you see any difference?

Questions:
Is it necessary for one to like reading to like literature as well?
or, at least good in literature? Any significance???