I did that thing the other night where I opened my phone “just for a second” to check something, and then resurfaced about 27 minutes later after watching a woman reorganise her fridge like she was preparing for a very aesthetic survival situation, while also feeling oddly convinced I should start meal prepping.
I wasn’t unhappy. I was in fact mildly entertained the whole time. It just didn’t leave me with much when I put the phone down. Afterwards I picked up a book and thought, for a second, “this feels like a lot of effort, "which is a slightly alarming sentence to think about, but here we are.
So I’ve been wondering what happens to reading when everything else starts behaving like content (short, fast, slightly addictive, and always one swipe away from something newer and shinier).
Content is very good at what it does, don't get me wrong. It arrives, it gives you something immediately, and it generally leaves before things get complicated. No emotional commitment. No follow-up texts.
A book however still does its own very old-fashioned thing. It doesn’t optimise for your attention. It doesn’t check in halfway through like, “still with me?” It just kind of starts speaking, and expects you to either stay or leave it entirely alone. There’s something almost rude about it, and also, annoyingly, something very good.
Because when you do stay with it (past the initial “why are there so many words” resistance), something happens. A character starts feeling like someone you could absolutely argue with in real life. A sentence sits in your head while you’re making coffee. You find yourself thinking about it while doing completely unrelated things, like replying to emails or pretending to be a functional adult.
It stays with you. And a lot of things now are not designed to stay with you. It wants to be consumed and then replaced. Even our attention has developed this slightly twitchy habit of always checking what else is happening somewhere else. So sitting with a book can feel almost suspiciously quiet and slow. Like you’ve accidentally stepped into something without realising it.
Please know that I don’t think this is a dramatic “books are dying” situation. It feels more subtle than that. More like we’ve just trained ourselves into a different rhythm, and now anything that doesn’t match it feels a bit slow to start. And because of that it means there is something incredibly comforting about the fact that books haven't changed to keep up.
They’re still here, doing the same thing they’ve always done: asking you to stay long enough for something to form properly. No shortcuts. No algorithmic assistance. Just the thing itself.
And maybe that’s the point I keep circling.
Reading isn't superior or more “pure”, it's just different. It asks for a kind of attention we’re not used to giving as freely anymore. And when you do give it, you realise how rare it’s become to spend time with something that isn’t trying to turn itself into the next thing.
In a world that moves this quickly, I hope you find something slow this week. Something quiet. (The weather in the Cape is giving the perfect excuse.) Even if it’s not a book.
PS: If you made it this far without checking your phone, that’s basically an Olympic sport now.