My brother reads on average 0 to 1 book a year and he is a better code than me. I personally read about 50 books per year. There is nothing about programming that requires you to be a good reader. If you are an avid reader, you will get some more interesting ideas to make your life and work more fulfilling. If you study another language, you will find many similarities with the grammar structure of a "human" language and the grammar structure of most programming languages leading to much cleaner and more well formed code. As a programmer, as long as you can think clearly about your problem, understand your users, and have a good understanding of the documentation of the tools that you are using you should be fine. Reading more exposes us to ideas that we would usually never think of ourselves but in my personal experience there are few ideas that come through this way. Most things come to you the old fashion way -- trial and error. As long as you are persistent and dedicated to your craft you can become a good programmer regardless of where you start and how often you read.
> and have a good understanding of the documentation of the tools that you are using
This is really the counterpoint to what you're saying.
You have to read documentation. It's dense and boring. It's the hardest thing to read. A poor reader is going to have a rough time with it, IMO--particularly so if they stumble into a poorly documented tool or API.
