Wasting Time on a Book

I have recent­ly wast­ed two days on a not-so-good book. It’s not the 5 or so hours that I spent read­ing the not-so-good book that I regret. It’s the time I spent try­ing to decide what to write about the not-so-good book, indeed whether to write about it at all. Time spent read­ing (almost?) any­thing isn’t wast­ed. Even if all I learn from a book is what the not-so-good think­ing on a par­tic­u­lar sub­ject looks like I have got­ten some val­ue for my time. The time I spent think­ing fur­ther about the not-so-good book, how­ev­er, is time that I could have spent think­ing about some­thing more interesting.