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It’s worth having some form of takeaway from a book, even if it’s just one profound paragraph that resonated with you, and the rest can be filtered out. I mostly read self help, and have managed to boil some books down to a little kernel of truth that I use daily to help me navigate life. Holding a whole book in your head can be done.

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Alternatively, books can be entertainment, and that's fine. This I think is a difference in the types of books read. I generally don't read self help books, my experiences in the past with many of them leaving me uninterested in the genre, and instead tend to mostly read novels, especially sci-fi/fantasy.

It would rather negate the entertainment value, and would feel more like work, if I had to take notes for a book club style experience, though as evidenced by the popularity of book clubs, there's plenty of people who feel different.

This is why I find, especially for self help books, reading a distilled summary may suffice. Often the Wikipedia page for the book has enough depth for me.

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