Those who do not read

[Mari]

From my own research on vocabulary acquisition, it became apparent that rather than reading a book, reading a text on the internet with hypertext explaining words in pictures and video is more effective. Even more effective than pure reading is watching a film in the target language with subtitles in the target language.
Not what you'd expect at all eh? The main explanation for this (for now, it's quite a new area of research) is that when watching a film your brain is occupied in 2 ways: textually and visually. The link in your brain connecting the sound and shape of a word to a meaning/image is stronger because of this. Think about it: if you read something you may not know how to pronounce it even when you know what it means. You may also think you know what it means, but you don't have the visual to make certain, all you have is the words surrounding that specific word.

It's interesting stuff, though not immediately related to your question which isn't about learning a second language. But you could wonder: if this is the way it works for acquiring vocabulary in a second language, might it not work this way for other things as well? Is reading in itself all it is cracked up to be? I think that, as Katya says, it's not about the reading per se, but about being interested enough in things to read. And not that alone, but also in being able to pick out information from texts not necessarily meant to be informational. For example: as a child I used to read a lot of Suske en Wiske, a comic book. I gathered a lot of facts from those comics, astounding adults around me, especially if I mentioned where I got it from. I also learned a lot about history through reading historical 'chick flicks', not the source you'd expect.
So to conclude: I think it isn't about reading, but about why and how one reads.