Do your friends by any chance happen to have really pumped up muscles, and speak with a thick Austrian accent, and whenever they look at a book, they say things like:

"I do not read. I lead." ?

If yes, then ask them to say the phrase: "I'll be back."

Then laugh and snicker, and scurry away, and read whatever f'ing books you want to read to gain new knowledge!

Joking aside, in the end they say that we often make our own hell on Earth.

And in my opinion, one of the great hells on Earth has always been book/reading censorship. So if you want to self sensor yourself, and forbid yourself from reading books you actually enjoy and want to read then...

you'll be headed well down the pathway to manufacturing your own hell!