specis

I don’t know if this counts, but a friend of mine was trying to get me to read her roommate’s self-published book. The description printed on the back of the book had glaring grammar mistakes. I didn’t keep reading. It was awkward trying to explain why I wasn’t interested.

Great way to waste money, and get cheers from the ignorant.

The Book of the New Sun.

It’s not really about time travel, and doesn’t make it a huge part of the overall plot. It’s something that’s sort of present, and relates to events that happen (or happened?).

I think most books with time travel focus on that specifically, so it’s interesting reading a book that has it while not really making it explicit or even focusing on it much.

Figure I’ll answer in the spirit of the question rather than give the typical iamverysmart avoidant answers like so many others:

Ideally I’d have been into astronomy still. Map out the stars and how they change through the year. Grind lenses. Draw planets.

If not that, probably some sort of games. Card games or gambling wouldn’t be uncommon.

People who treat the author like a bad person because they wrote a character who does bad things has always annoyed me.

I see what OP talks about with the Name of the Wind books. People get an impression of the main character as a mary sue, or the author obsessed with sex, and somehow their brains seize up and they become unable to understand anything about the book that contradicts these impressions.

People really get dismissive because of their own personal failures to understand what they read.