I have read Knuth though them being part of the CS curriculum, back when I took my degree. They are very revered too, and reasonable so, because they are hard to fault. I personally think they are a needlessly waste of your time though. There are much more approachable books, that’ll teach you the same content in a much friendlier way.
I don’t think we’ll agree though. Especially if you hold harder programming books in higher regard than harder fiction. It took me significantly more effort to go through Dostoyevsky than it did me to go through Knuth, for instance.
And you still haven’t pointed out who exactly the numbers are a useless metric. If book sales aren’t down, isn’t it fair to say, that people are still buying books?
There are differently difficult books and trying to pretend that goosebump has anything to do with Dostoyevsky or whatever is odd. As for waste of time, if Knuth is waste of time, so are there adventures. They are literally meant for that.
I liked Dostoyevsky, dunno why that book I read would be difficult to read book. Maybe you read different book or worst translation.
I don't think original comments in thread we both joined had anything to do with sales.
You can read lovercraft or goosebump without any prerequisite knowledge. Greek or otherwise. Authors took care and effort to make it so. They succeeded. It was intentionally written to be pleasant and easy read, both their goal and skills were unlike those of Knuth. I used to read a lot of books like that, it is not that I would think bad of author of those books. I appreciate them for what they are.
Reading goosebump book and art of programming are not comparable actions. It is good argument for why counting books per year without context makes no sense.