I too found myself not being able to really discuss books I had read that long ago. So I slowed down my reading pace. Not just how many I take in, but how much time I spend reading the books. With particularly challenging things I have always returned to them, and re-read them as my understanding of the book expands, or my perspective on things changes, however I realized I remembered them in far more detail than others, and it was because the challenge slowed me down, and forced me to spend time contemplating what it was I was reading, as I was reading it.
I enjoy reading a lot more now. I am not in university any more, I do not have to read 500 pages per day.
I still go to the recipes, and skip over the fluff. I have found numerous errors in AI summaries of recipes when they are anything but very well know, common, ones. Very well known, common to the Anglosphere that is.