Unrelated, but "insidious" is a terrific word which doesn't get used enough

This is not about FREEDOM, but: Maybe when you get to a certain echelon of literary criticism, it no longer bothers you to have to pan a book you were looking forward to for months, for which you cleared out your time and hunkered down, and from which you expected so much better. Transcendence, really. Maybe when you roll out your scroll of judgments rendered, the few fade from view, just a handful, because most of them turn out just like they should. The burned dinners of the long marriage; the rainouts of the championship season.

If so, I have not ascended yet. "Oh, but who cares? It's just a book." If I didn't care, would I be in this cul-de-sac at all?