Reading is the best experience at which you could be involved into without moving of the couch. When I read, it shots my imagination free instantaneously, is like an hallucination: strong, vivid, emotional. You could get into the character though, the situation...and all imagined as you want and wish.
In one word: awesome.
The main issue is that you need to be very proficient at the skill of "reading" first to experience it properly. Awfully, school teaches you the very basics of reading. By itself, school teaches you to read as fast as you could talk. No more, no less. That is equivalent to say that you go to an academia to learn how to walk, and they teach you just "how to walk" and...that's it!: no running, no jumping, no lacing your shoes, no words for swagging or walking, no mancha or football, no nothing of the fun stuff!!!
This is the worst way of reading. Is like eating raw nutrients vs taking a full french like food in a top restaurant...
Essentially, school teaches you to read silently, you cast every-single-word by itself. This is not only under performant, this is boring as hell!
The speed for this, is like: 250 words by minute. If you read this fast, you sub vocalize every single word; which makes your experience entirely different from mine. Your brain, at this speed, works like this:
Understand the letter form identify every single one Understand the words Understand the sentence cast for imagination (if there is still energy...) multiplied this BY WORD.
If you practice enough, you would "see" a word and take the feeling or image straight out of it. This happens when you are above 350 words per minute. This means that you read a "standard" book page at the same rate at which you walk 100 meters or above. (1 page by minute and a half).
In this speed, your experience is like this:
Identify the line form See the sentence see punctuation cast image. Multiply this BY LINE or SENTENCE.
You read three, four or even the entire sentence; you get the image right away, because "small strings of words" are more or less the same from book to book. So, easily you start to imagine it...without even actually "reading it"...is like, I dunno...movie or a dream.
But, how you increase your speed? reading, reading, reading and trying to improve yourself. Endure on it. It is worth, it pays.
When you're fluent reading, is not only your experience at reading novels which improves...when you study, you do it more efficiently. So you have to study for less hours.