Indeed, we believe reading to be THE key, the primary tool for student and professor alike. We take reading for granted: it's a skill that people learn in elementary school, a habit that people at universities imbue with virtue. We seem to assume it's a pretty much universal capability in our society, though in fact a large proportion of the population doesn't read much.
I think it's pretty likely that none of the incoming freshmen has ever read a book of this sort, and that very few will have managed to read this one. We need to think about what this means: why active reading is such hard work, what can possibly be done to encourage the habit, and how teachers should think about the reading they assign.
We assign material to be read and assimilated, with the tacit assumption that students have the skills of assimilation, and the further (just as tacit) assumption that they value the activity as we [affect to] do. Neither assumption is true of most.
Most students pick up reading survival skills --they go through the motions with words on a page, wield highlighters to mark what seems portentious or critically important, and attempt to commit to [short-term] memory what they believe will enable them to pass exams. But most aren't really intellectually engaged. And very few are active readers.
One necessity for active reading is to have places to put what one takes in. This is true in the literal sense of having some effective means to make notes (record for later consideration that which is/seems/becomes important), and in the virtual sense of having the mental filespace ready to receive, process, and integrate the new information as it flows in. Again, these are skills we tacitly assume, but do very little to assist and support the evolution of. And evolve they must, since they are individual and personal accomplishments which one refines throughout life.