Can you be a good PhD student if you hate reading literature? I am a PhD student in computer science.  My advisor keeps telling me I need to read papers, but I find most of them really long and boring, no matter what field they are in (but especially if there are a lot of math equations).  Usually my mind starts wandering after one or two pages.

My advisor thinks I should read one or two papers a day (apparently he does this himself), but if I followed his instructions (and yes, I've tried doing that), I would literally spend the whole day reading papers, or 20% reading papers and 80% procrastinating.

I am perfectly capable of reading papers if there's something specific I want to gain from the paper (like if the paper is really relevant to my project, or if I need to implement an algorithm from the paper).  But I have a hard time doing broad literature reviews and getting to know a field if I don't have a specific problem in mind.  A lot of times I just end up not doing them.

Does this automatically make me a bad researcher, and what are some ways I can compensate for my short attention span?
Interesting question, I have thought about this alot both during my PhD studies and afterwards... 

There are some answers and comments touching upon the aspects like why you should be reading, or what it means to read. I will try to give my two cents on the question title, which I assume is what's really on your mind, that is whether or not you're suitable for doing research if you don't like reading literature. 

Short answer: It depends... 

There's no way of knowing, or objectively guessing, whether or not it will work out fine for you. There are way too many parameters to consider

Long answer: It depends... 

I'm sure you've heard, and will hear and see, people reading constantly. They will be telling you what you should read, how much you should read. I know I have... 

While I don't doubt the sincerity or the good intentions behind these sentiments I am not sure how accurate or helpful they actually are. Hearing and reading those kind of comments have demotivated me at best, and pushed me further and further away from pursuing a career in academia at worst. 

I was super ambitious in the beginning; I highlighted numerous journals that I deemed important in my field, signed up for their eTOC alerts. Read the short abstracts of anything that got published there. I had email alerts for a bunch of keywords, that were relevant for my work. Those articles that matched any one of those would be labeled in my inbox, I'd make sure to go through the whole article, albeit quickly... 

About half way into my PhD studies (which is in bioinformatics, for the record) I've realized that there is quite literally no way for me to stay on top of literature, to a satisfactory degree. There is just too many people out there, doing way too many experiments that may be relevant somehow to my work. Also around the same time I started to look at publishing a bit more critically. The way funding and career options look these days, there is tremendous pressure on people to publish. 

That has several significant implications, two really significant ones are:


there's an increasing number of publications (and the rate of increase is also increasing, although I dare not say exponentially)
a significant portion of the articles are written to secure research funds, deliver results for a received grant or secure the next position; as opposed to being written to be read and understood easily
stuff that wouldn't normally be published gets published. this could happen for a number of different reasons like the group that wrote the paper is too influential to get rejected or objectively critiqued, or the reviewers are too busy to give a proper review of the work, or the in the worst case of all, there is data forgery committed


So at the end of the day, you start doubting what's actually on the paper, and start wondering about what's been omitted, or how the article was framed in order to get it published. 

Added on top of that is the fact that a significant portion of the articles are not read and an overwhelming majority of the articles are never cited. The exact numbers have been a matter of debate (here's one link there are many more) however the fact remains that a significant portion of the literature is ignored at best, treated as garbage at worst. 

All of these reasons give birth to a skepticism that is hard to ignore. A lot of my colleagues and friends who've been through my phd studies with me essentially agree. I have yet to meet a PhD student who get invigorated and excited by a pile of articles that s/he needs to read... (Interesting side note here is how majority of the people that will typically talk about how much one needs to read are senior scientists.)

Finally the matter of work-life separation. Many academics would go around saying that being a scientist is a lifestyle not a profession. I have this very close to heart where many PIs I personally know well (including my brother) spend a significant amount of their free time reading articles. For the life of me, I have no idea why... The last thing I want to do when I get home is to read research articles. I think it's healthy to separate work and life beyond work, but I haven't gotten so far into my career, so take that with a pinch of salt.

So, as you can see, I share the same worry (unless I misunderstood the origin of the question) that OP does. I have been worried about this for several years now, am I a bad scientist because I am not interested in reading literature? 

I am not sure, I have been getting pretty much only positive feedback on my work and skills, so I am not entirely sure it's that bad as it might appear. While I agree that one cannot completely shut out reading altogether and ignore literature, I don't think one needs to obssess about reading constantly.
I honestly think it's a matter of etiquette, or an ambition to strive towards, even though most sensible people realize that it's not really feasible to constantly stay on top of literature. 

I say: do read, at least as much as you need to, about the subjects you need to know about, the rest is optional. Don't worry about keeping statistics or meeting thresholds, just try to stay well-informed about your field.