Reading vs. Writing

Whenever someone tells me they want to become a writer, my first question is always "What do you read?"
A significant number of these people look at me like I have two heads. "Read? I don't read. I want to WRITE." At that point I walk away. If people who want to be writers don’t understand the importance of reading they will never succeed.
I think of reading as the background to my writing life. I am always reading at least two books, a fiction and a non-fiction. I read something every day and I write something every day. In May I am on a panel at a conference, and have to read the panelist's works. I noticed as soon as I started reading in earnest, the amount of writing I did went down. I read less during my mad writing periods, but I still have something going.
When I started writing about Emily, I read only things that she would have read. As I became more confident I could read pretty much anything without disrupting my writing. Now I tend to read things that my characters wouldn't have access to or be interested in.
At the moment I am working on a short story set in 1799 and reading a work set in 1889. Non-fiction? History of the Brandywine Springs Amusement Park by Mark R Lawlor.