Resolved: If a scholarly book will not be helpful for the project I'm working on, and I know it, I will put it aside. If I think it might be enjoyable reading, I will put it on the bedside table, or make a note to pick it up again later, but I will not waste two valuable research days on it.
And yet, like a bad relationship, once I had committed to it, I resolved to see it through to the end, even if my treatment of the last dying bit was somewhat half-assed and unenthusiastic. The compulsive note-taker in me kicked in ("But we have little colored sticky tabs!") and I kept slogging, long after it had ceased to be anything but mildly irritating. I need to learn to let go, if I'm not getting anything out of it anymore. Cut my losses. Issue the book a bill of divorce, and move on.
On the other hand, if a mildly interesting but hardly groundbreaking book like this one can find a home at a university press, maybe mine can, too?
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