>I get a sort of "movie in my head" when I'm readingI think this means you're doing it right! In Polanyian terms, your subsidiary awareness is on the particulars of the typography and the words allowing your focal awareness to be on the fun bit, i.e. on the meaning.
This ability, I think, depends just as much on how interesting and enjoyable the content is as it depends on your reading skill.
For more Michael Polanyi I recommend this superb (audio, non-fictional) lecture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVx8KhsZYPw
>I don't read non-fiction like that, though. It just doesn't happen, and I don't know how to make it happen.
This may be because the books are boring. For instance, textbooks. Here the reading is mainly about searching for the relevant material, so the focal awareness is on the text itself. However, Feynman's Hairy Green Ball Method seems applicable:
https://www.e-reading.club/chapter.php/71262/21/Feynman_-_Su...
I had a scheme, which I still use today when somebody is explaining something that I’m trying to understand: I keep making up examples. For instance, the mathematicians would come in with a terrific theorem, and they’re all excited. As they’re telling me the conditions of the theorem, I construct something which fits all the conditions. You know, you have a set (one ball)—disjoint (two halls). Then the balls turn colors, grow hairs, or whatever, in my head as they put more conditions on. Finally they state the theorem, which is some dumb thing about the ball which isn’t true for my hairy green ball thing, so I say, “False!”