From Books to Doomscrolling

There was a time when having a book in hand meant escaping the noise around us. We carried books on our journeys, kept them beside our beds, read them at a café table while waiting for someone and sometimes reading the intriguing climax kept us awake too late. With the advent of Kindle and many other e-readers, carrying an entire library in our pocket is an easy-breezy affair. Yet many of us are not much into reading. So, we have solved the problem of access to books, but the irony is difficult to ignore. Perhaps there is an elephant in the room that no one is noticing: the loss of our attention.

Open a novel, and there is only the story. Open a phone, and just the screen lock is flooded with notifications of messages, Instagram reels, YouTube videos, news updates and advertisements. The list goes on. We could choose peace in flipping pages, but people get caught up in the noise and cacophony of “influencer” content.

Moreover, reading a novel is slow. Scrolling is much faster. A book does not immediately reward us every few seconds. We must move through pages and chapters before discovering a significant portion of the story. While scrolling, one video or post ends and another begins. One photograph gives way to another. There is no natural stopping point. We have forgotten how to simply be unoccupied.

While reading, there is much more engagement. A reader remembers what happened several pages earlier. Sometimes readers develop a mental image of characters and places. At times, readers feel pain deep inside at the most unfortunate endings or even feel the warmth of a satisfyingly happy ending.

When someone says that they don’t have time to read a book, they must introspect and realize what they are prioritizing more in their daily routine.

As James Clear explains in his book "Atomic Habits," “small habits compound." Thirty minutes of reading today may not transform you; however, thirty minutes of reading every day might transform your relationship with reading. The first thirty minutes are, therefore, not about finishing a chapter, completing a book, or becoming a proactive reader. They are about starting the habit.

We often make the mistake of judging an activity by its immediate outcome. Someone might think, “What difference will reading for only 30 minutes make for me?” Thirty minutes a day is 3.5 hours a week and roughly 182.5 hours a year. Even if the reading pace varies, that is a substantial amount of time spent with books. The goal at the beginning is not maximum reading; it is consistency.

And this is where the recent death of Jeffrey Archer feels particularly poignant. Jeffrey Archer, the bestselling British novelist and former politician, died on October 5, 2026, at the age of 86. He died suddenly and peacefully at home, between writing sessions. His final novel, "Adam and Eve," was published the following day. Across a career spanning five decades, Archer sold more than 300 million books worldwide. I read his book "Paths of Glory," and I got captivated by his style of portrayal and narration of the most sensitive events.

And perhaps this is the uncomfortable truth: sometimes we buy books because we want to become the kind of person who reads, not because we are prepared to read. Kindle sits beside us. The books are waiting on the dusty shelves. Meanwhile, the phone remains in our hand. But there is still hope. That is what makes the loss of a storyteller like Jeffrey Archer meaningful. He belonged to a generation of writers who believed that if you could tell a gripping enough story, people would turn the page. Maybe they still will.