Text Selection and Fake Reading

All of the readings for this course so far keep pointing to the importance of text selection. Whether it's a guided reading lesson, independent reading book, shared reading, selecting the right text seems to be the most important step towards becoming a good reader. My concern, after reading Tovanni and her discussion of fake reading, is how do we get kids to be engaged with textbook material? While the obvious answer might be, "don't use textbooks", the reality is that most school curriculum, even and especially through college, depends on reading textbooks for information.
I volunteered in a school that used those terrible reading textbooks in elementary, so even their class time devoted to reading was with textbooks. I think it's difficult to engage kids in reading textbook material, especially because it's often written so dryly and the material is rarely connected to their lives, which means students often end up fake reading them. So how do we make it meaningful for them because they can't simply fake read all textbook material...can they? What would be the point?
I start to wonder if this is how I read textbooks through school, by not really reading them or reading for answers to questions only. Even when I think long and hard, I can't recall a single textbook having that feeling of specialness which so many books have for me. So have I answered my own question...
Is it possible to make textbook material meaningful for students, and if it is possible how do we do it?