Instead of ranking books as good or bad and then defining good readers as those who like good books, invert the procedure: define good reading first, then call a book good if it permits or invites that kind of reading. A book becomes bad only if it admits no reading other than a bad one.
To 'use' a work is to treat it as an aid to your own prior activities and feelings; to 'receive' it is to exert your senses and imagination to get what the work itself prescribes, setting your own preoccupations aside. The same object can be used or received, and both are legitimate, but only reception lets the work enlarge you.
The mark of the literary is rereading: they return to the same works many times, while the unliterary read a text once for the event or news in it and never again. Frequent reading of a few works, rather than wide consumption, signals the literary posture.
Some reading feeds 'egoistic castle-building,' where the reader inserts a flattering version of himself as hero and gratifies private wishes. This differs from disinterested 'free' fantasy that delights in a world without making the self its center.
The purpose of literature is not to express or confirm your own personality but to escape it by seeing through other eyes: you become a thousand men yet remain yourself. Good reading enlarges being by letting you occupy experiences and viewpoints you could never reach alone.
A work's value cannot be settled before anyone has enjoyed it, because the proof of good literature is that it is received and relished in the right way. Evaluation should therefore follow from the quality of attention a book sustains rather than from critical theory applied in advance.