[mfn]

Thanks, that's a very insightful way to think about it. Reminded me of PG's "How You Know" (http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html), where he points out that not being able to recall information from a book doesn't mean that the book was "useless", because the process of reading a book weaves it into your subconscious model of the world.

Makes me feel a lot better about all the time I've spent reading books that I can't immediately recall the details of.