Remember When You Used to Disappear Inside a Book?

What We're Talking About

Life

By Rebecca Lewis

Self

Photo by Fabio Lovino/HBO

Life

By Rebecca Lewis

Self

What We're Talking About

Remember When You Used to Disappear Inside a Book?

What happens when you start reading again

Rebecca Lewis used to spend more time choosing her holiday reads than her swimwear choices. She ran book clubs, followed prize shortlists and always had a novel in her handbag. Then, somewhere between the doomscroll and the second shift, she lost the habit entirely. Here’s what neuroscience, a viral speed-reading challenge and a librarian’s recommendation taught her about falling back in love with reading.

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Four in 10 Brits didn't read a single book in the past year.* I never got that far, but I was drifting in that direction. More than a third of us have dropped a regular reading habit. Guilty. And 36% of women say they don’t have time to read.** That one I'm less convinced by. If I've got twenty minutes for Facebook, I've got twenty minutes for a novel.

Jaclyn in White Lotus knew that too. While her friends baked in the Thai sun, she was the one with a book. Outnumbered, slightly apart but entirely unbothered. Most of us used to be her. This piece is about how to get that woman back and why we should.

We all know the reasons. Smartphones. Work. The second shift. Motherhood. The doomscroll. The question isn’t what’s turned our brains into pinball machines; it’s whether reading is something we can get back to.

Ironically, social media offered me a solution. A 2026 viral speed-reading challenge promised to test how quickly I could read, with many chasing 900 words a minute. I gave it a go. It was oddly satisfying but strangely hollow. Since when had reading become another thing to optimise? How had someone who’d once savoured fiction suddenly started treating books like step counts and Duolingo streaks? Reading at speed was never the goal. I wanted to disappear inside the pages.

“Deep reading is always about connection: connecting what we know to what we read, what we read to what we feel, what we feel to what we think. ”

Then Instagram served up a quote from reading neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf that sent me in a different direction. In Reader, Come Home, she writes: “Deep reading is always about connection: connecting what we know to what we read, what we read to what we feel, what we feel to what we think, and how we think to how we live in a connected world.”

Wolf was spelling out what I’d lost sight of. Books aren’t supposed to be a metric. They’re something much deeper.

Science offered another source of encouragement in the form of neuroplasticity. Every time we practise a skill, the brain strengthens its neural pathways. Stop using them and they weaken, but they don't simply disappear. Years of scrolling had trained my brain to skim, but I could retrain it for deep reading.

But how to begin? In Atomic Habits, James Clear argues the start of a new habit should be almost impossible not to do. So instead of “read for half an hour”, the goal became simply: "open the book." It turns out even that can be surprisingly hard when your phone is already in your hand.

Back to Wolf's idea of connection. I realised I'd been choosing books for the wrong reasons. Instead of novels that might change me, I'd been reaching for ones that looked easy to finish – perfectly decent psychological thrillers and beach reads that entertained me but rarely lingered. So, I stopped finishing everything. Bookworms have shorthand for it: DNF – “did not finish”. Life's too short for bad books and reading just to reach the last page feels more like homework than pleasure.

“It turns out I didn't need to get my reading brain back. I just needed to fall in love with books again. ”

So, during a family holiday, I went in search of what I used to get from books. A Kindle review ("a slow read with powerful lessons") persuaded me to download what turned out to be a jewel of a book. Within a few pages I'd forgotten every trick. I wasn't thinking about achieving a page count. I probably spent almost as much time not reading, closing the cover every few chapters to sit with an idea or admire a sentence. Like the best books, it didn't just tell a story; it started an internal conversation that continued long after the last page. There was the connection Wolf was talking about.

The final lesson came not from a meme or a life hack, but from within. I used to curate my reading life. There was always a book in my handbag. I ran book clubs. Before holidays I'd spend longer choosing new books than new sandals and swimwear. I read prize shortlists, followed publishers, and kept a running “to be read” list. It had never felt like a chore. Every new book felt like a gift to myself. Half the pleasure of curating that shelf lay in the anticipation.

So, I rebuilt those rituals: a proper TBR list on my phone, and stealing a few minutes while the kids browsed the children's section and heading straight for the reserved shelf at my local library. It's a goldmine for recommendations. If someone's wanted a book badly enough to ask a librarian to put a hold on it, it might be one for my TBR list too.

None of those things on their own made me a reader again. But together, they reminded me that browsing is part of the romance of reading and choosing a book is an act of self-care.

It turns out I didn't need to get my reading brain back. I just needed to fall in love with books again.

Epilogue

If you’re inspired to pick up a book, here are some suggestions. If they aren’t your cup of tea, perhaps they’ll simply inspire you to find what is. Happy reading.