For me, at least, it's less about the reading. I always used to be a big reader like you describe - I had exactly the same experiences having my books being tak

For me, at least, it's less about the reading. I always used to be a big reader like you describe - I had exactly the same experiences having my books being taken away from me for misbehaving, or even just reading too late at night - so I'm fully on board with the idea that people should read more, and challenge themselves to read new and different things. For me, it's more the idea that reading is going to turn your life around somehow, or that just by reading the right classics you can make yourself a better person. That feels like a self-justification for pretention more than anything else - the literary equivalent of the "holds up spork" meme where you make something you're interested in into an entire character trait. I think the idea of reading replacing an entire liberal arts education is also kind of laughable. I've done a lot of reading, and although my own formal education veered more towards engineering, I had friends who did the liberal arts properly. There's no real comparison between my casual reading of Dostoevsky ("a bit morose, wouldn't recommend") and someone who understands enough of his literary context that they can take his books apart and show you why everything is like it is. (That's not to say you can't learn these things as a lay person, just that there's a lot more to literary criticism and the wider liberal arts than just "go away and read".)