There’s different levels of reading and one’s can read better than another depending on how active is he/she reading and how he/she involve in the acts of reading. Reading can’t be 100% passive at all, so it is more about where do we put the cursor of “activity”. Just like the reading speed, we choose how active we want to read according to the goal we have.
From: How To Read A Book, The Classic Guide To Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren