Revenge of the text dumps (or am I getting too lazy?)

Yes, good point, one important aspect is the ability to quickly determine the importance of such non-interactively presented information. From author side, just saying “but all of this is purely optional” is hardly sufficient; the player also needs to have a chance to understand it as such before investing his or her time. If this is done well, I have no objections to long-ish information dumps, either.