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hypothesis: the wrong reason to read books is to feel a need to read books because you're supposed to have read them as an educated person, or as some kind of weird status thing of being part of the ingroup, or a general need to feel well read and worldly. the right reason is to feel a burning passion to find a specific piece of knowledge that will finally answer a question you are curious about that happens to be locked inside a specific book, or a gnawing pain in your heart that can only be quelled by knowing that it's a universal problem that someone out there across space and time understands and has fixed in themselves.
Idk if running is a good example. Champion long distance runners look very thin and frail. Sprinters look great, but most people running for health reasons don't sprint.
As for reading, I read for the same reason I listen to music: it's fun. Maybe a good gateway drug is Hunter Thompson's wave speech, it's a short piece of prose that's just impossible not to love.
This is maybe offtopic to the thread, but I think the impression of language proficiency depends a lot on accent, and adults learning a foreign language don't spend nearly enough time on accent. A few weeks of watching youtube videos in the target language, trying to imitate the sounds exactly right, is a small effort which will yield amazing results at any age. But for some reason adults don't do it.
2Viliam
Because it feels low-status. Imitating sounds is what small children do.