If you read a book, and you don’t remember much, is that time wasted?

When someone asks me about books that I read several years back, I often remember very little from them. Does that mean I should read less, or differently? Even for fiction, where learning facts is not the goal, if I can’t come up with a choice quote, or really understand how/if it affected me, maybe that’s a bad thing. After all, life is short.

First, it is definitely possible to read better. Robert Heaton lays out a system, which I would like to use but don’t.