With smartphones stealing our attention, we’re picking up fewer books than ever. A novelist shares her eight-week scheme to get you back into the habit
Do you feel that it’s harder to read than it used to be? Not harder to read emails, texts and social media posts, of course. We’re reading those all day long. Harder to sit down and lose yourself in a book? How long is it since you even sat down with a weekend newspaper and read it cover to cover? Do you feel that you used to have a life-sustaining reading habit, everything from fun popcorn novels to serious nonfiction, classic and contemporary, many genres and writers, but somehow it’s gone away? It doesn’t feel like a decision that you made. It just happened.
I feel like that. At least more like that than I’m comfortable with. I’m a novelist and I present programs about thinking on the BBC, and yet even I am finding that I’m reading less than I used to. It seems more of an effort and less of a consistent, persistent habit than it was. I hate this feeling. I still have the habit of acquiring books, buying them, getting them from libraries, being sent them. And I do still read. Compared with many people, I probably read an enormous amount, but I know it’s not as much as I used to read. And I know where the time has gone.
