some people read an awful lot, but don't read very well. deep reading is itself a skill. being able to untangle the threads of theme, subtext, characterization, narrative style, and more are all things that it takes time and intentional engagement to learn.
if you've ever watched a movie with your film buff friend and chatted about it afterwards, that friend might have pulled hours more of conversation out of the same 90 minutes of screentime, and wondered how the fuck they did that - it's not raw intelligence, it's a skill that's been honed. And I learned a lot about film from talking to friends who knew about film, and reading critique by film scholars
literature works exactly the same. so if you want to get more out of your reading, there are things you can do to train that. Find a book or short story you think you've got a pretty good grasp on, preferably from a widely read & respected author like Ursula K Le Guin or Ray Bradbury (if you're new at this don't swing for the Toni Morrison or the Samuel Beckett yet unless you feel very comfortable with the complexity of the text - the point is to develop a complicated new skill on good foundations). Then go to JSTOR, create a free account, and look up criticism on the story you've chosen. Find something that looks readable to you and at least somewhat interesting. Read that article, and look at what that writer got out of the same story you've read that you didn't get. Do you see the critic's points? Did they teach you something about the text? Go reread that story and see if the criticism has changed how you read it. Are you seeing more? Are you thinking about the implications of a line that you hadn't noticed before? Does the story feel richer now?
there are other more involved ways of finding criticism. Learning to use academic databases, going to your local library to do interlibrary loans, finding critical voices you appreciate; these are all useful subskills. Literacy isn't just being able to read words, it's being able to read words in context and think about what they tell you about the text, the author, or the time and culture in which the text was produced. Literacy is the skill of being able to look at the world with open eyes and think clearly about how its parts are connected. It'll change your life
this keeps getting shared around and ive seen some different tags responding differently so i just want to make some important clarifications and distillations
you don't have to read more deeply if you don't want to (but i'd recommend it, i genuinely think it makes you a better person)
if you want to learn to read more deeply, the resources are out there. try to find critical literature (that is, academic writing that analyzes the text) on works your familiar with so you can get a sense for how to do that analysis too
learning to deep read literature can help you deep read many areas of your life
writers tend to put a lot of work into their stories. if you learn to read that work you'll (probably) appreciate the stories you love even more. And if not, then you'll have developed your taste. This too is worth doing
