The books as a luxury items thing comes from a guy called Chip Kidd who is one of the premier book designers — you know his work, he created the Jurassic Park dino image later used in the movie.
You will notice that in recent years all of the lurid covers that used to adorn books have been replaced by more tasteful covers.
I don’t care who originally said books are a luxury item, if they were speaking about any time after the 1970s when the non-rare used bookstore was invented they were wrong. And really even before then, new books went up in price in the 80s and 90s way past inflation. And as for the time, again wrong, people make the time for what they want to do, anybody that can’t find time to read doesn’t actually read for recreation. It is a simply a false assertion.
Lurid covers were a general rarity anyway. They primarily adorned pulp books, the mainstream have always had mellow covers.