My trick: get the audiobook version, and listen while doing something else, which prevents my mind from wandering too far from the text. Ideally not something I was going to do anyway, but something that I'm only doing to occupy myself while I listen. I find that driving or cleaning are OK, but the problem is that they're both often too brief to really get into the book, and that they both occasionally demand cognition, and during those times I lose track of what's going on in the book.

I've found that the ideal accompaniments to audiobook listening are taking a walk and playing Nuclear Throne, which is the only video game that I've both found to be endlessly engaging, and requires absolutely no cognition. It's $12, runs on windows/mac/linux, has DRM-free versions available, and would probably perform adequately on your toaster.

If anyone knows of other games that work in this niche, please share. As much as I love occupying my hands with Nuclear Throne, I wouldn't mind mixing things up.