The purpose of this study is to examine the attitudes towards reading and literature that exist among adolescent youth in rural areas. The fact that young people read less now than before, and that their ability to read has decreased significantly over time, has been difficult to miss if one has followed the school policy discourse in recent years. A group of young people who are often left out of the reporting on school results are the young people who live outside the urban areas.   Using a questionnaire, this study aims to investigate the following: the attitudes that exist around fiction among the said group of young people; what could make them read more; and finally, how and which fiction they assimilate.   Based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of fields habitus and cultural capital this essay concludes that there is an urgent need to motivate the adolescent youth to read, otherwise there is a serious risk of them becoming an alienated group in the Swedish society, due to a lack of cultural capital.