Welcome to Ask The Book Doctor, a recurring series about books and reading them.
The beautiful shiny phone is killing us. We all know it, but there it is. We want it. It is made to keep us captivated. We are moths to its flame. Often, when I am around people I love, and one of us is looking at our phone, the other will say "What's happening on your phone?" This is embarrassing. It is so rare that anything is happening on the phone. About 99 percent of the time, the other person says "nothing," and puts their phone down. I see this in people in every generation. No one is immune.
What's so frustrating about the allure of the phone is that most of the time, it doesn't even make us feel good. It is a dreadful box feeding us awful news. It is a menacing insecurity simulator showing us people more beautiful and skinnier and richer than us while promising we can become them. We all know this. I am not saying anything new.
There are whole apps and products and support groups dedicated to trying to get people to put down their damn phones for even just a few hours. It's an addiction. It's an epidemic. And for someone who read a lot as a child and a teen, this shift feels even worse. There is something you like that you know in your body makes you feel good and alive—books! stories!—and yet you choose the shiny bad-feeling brick over and over again. How do you stop the cycle? What are you supposed to do?
The Case:
Today's patient is Jeremy, who has noticed that his reading has really slowed down recently. Reading, he says, used to be a core part of his identity. "I would irritate friends who were discussing a movie or a show by saying, 'Oh, I read that book.' In short, a book jerk," he writes. He used to read everything he could reach: classics and contemporary, big and small, good and bad. But now he has kids, and is in his mid-50s, and he can't stop scrolling on social media. Jeremy is reasonably informed of the news (terrifying for anyone who cares about anything), and his desire to read has gone out the window.
He's looking for what everyone is looking for: a book that's both compelling and well-written. He prefers something short, so he won't be intimidated. He doesn't care about genre and would prefer to read something not written by a white dude. Mostly, he just needs recommendations for good books. "It is a sign that I get a lot of my recommendations from social media. What happened to my reading friends?" he writes.
The Prescription:
In the past iterations of this column, I have chosen readers having specific problems who need specific advice. I have called in specialists to help prescribe them books. But Jeremy's problem is one that I hear all the time. Because I read a lot, I have this conversation a lot. Everyone wants to know how to start reading again. This is a common issue in part because it is much harder to be an adult with a job and responsibilities and maybe children than it is to be a child who reads or even a young adult who reads. I don't think anyone should feel bad for not having time to read. It is hard to be a person and hard to be alive.
But the problem for many people is that they do have time to read, and instead they are gazing into the beautiful light of the phone for three hours. Jeremy (and many other people emailing me) want a book to help them read again, but what they also need are skills to make time for reading! This is like when you go to the doctor and she annoyingly tells you that you need to go to the gym and eat better, and for that I am sorry. Here are five things I do to make it easier for me to read:
- Plug your phone in for the night in a room besides your bedroom and head to bed 30 minutes earlier. Nothing is going to happen during the night, and if a true emergency occurs that needs you, someone will be at your door. I promise. Go to your bed and read.
- I purchased a device about six months ago that blocks all the addicting apps on my phone (Gmail, Slack, TikTok, Instagram) unless I return physically to the device to turn it off. I put this at the farthest point from me inside my house, and I'm lazy, so this works well for me.
- Everyone who grew up reading physical books hates to hear this (me included), but you need to start reading digitally. You are not going to have a book with you most of the time, but you will have your phone. The Libby app is one of the world's best apps. It's not illegal to be reading a physical book and a book on your phone at the same time!
- Accountability! You have to tell someone that it is important to you that you read more, and ask this person for help. Tell them to ask you about reading every day. This is easier if you live with another adult, but if you do not, you could also have a friend text you every day to ask what you've read. If you are only financially motivated, you could tell your friend they get to charge you $5 every time you don't.
- Quit books. If you don't want to pick it up, just give up. This is not a moral failing. It is not even saying the book is bad. You can always go back to it at a later time. Sometimes you're just not in the mood for a specific story.
For most people, it is always easier to choose the thing that is garbage for us than it is to choose good things. I always want Taco Bell, and I almost never want spinach. I always want to lie flat on my couch and never want to go to the gym. That's all fine. But if you want to fight your phone addiction for the sake of reading, you have to treat it seriously. It's not just about finding a good book. It's about adjusting your lifestyle to make it more what you want it to be. I believe in your ability to read again! I believe in all of you. But it will never come as easily as it did as a child.
That said, a great book doesn't hurt, and after all of this, I am going to prescribe Jeremy a book, I swear! I am prescribing him Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker. I loved this book so much that I still remember where I was when I started it. I was in a hotel in Boston, trying to calm my brain after doing a live show, and I stayed up way too late reading it. It's a gorgeous 1962 novel about being in your 20s, and mental illness, and sabotaging your dumb sister's wedding. I really think you'll like it.
If you need a consult from the Book Doctor for any of your book dilemmas, please email bookdoctor@defector.com.
