Escaping the Scroll: How I Found My Way Back to Books

The Quiet Rebellion of Reading

It’s been a glorious two months of reading! Imagine me skipping around as I say this. I’ve read 9 books in this time. That’s 8 more than I read since the start of this year…so you can imagine my excitement when I finally got out of my reading slump!

Picture someone who’s set a goal to read 15 books this year, except the system of reading they set in January 2025 came undone by February 2025. That was me. In an attempt to return to the reader I once was many moons ago, I set myself this goal. But why was I unable to achieve it? 

The obstacles were many…but there was a subtly treacherous one that disguised itself neatly in my daily routine. My phone and attention-grabbing apps like TikTok. 

I forgot that reading was a slow-burn activity. I forgot that my dopamine-high-jacked brain that was so used to short-form content would have trouble coping again. The engagement with these sorts of apps wasn’t preparing me for the sort of engagement needed for reading books. If anything, it was hindering it. Go figure!

But by July I had enough. I remember the London heat finally breaking through after the chapters of wind and rain weeks before. Maybe it was the overstimulation I felt from the heat? Maybe my unventilated British home? Or perhaps I had enough of being in the endless, zombie-like state I was in as I scrolled mindlessly, one video after the other, buried in unfinished thoughts, repeated trends, the same grueling discourse, one after the other, the next, the next, another one, saved and skipped, sent to friend and skipped, more, more, more… I finally exploded. 

I would say spontaneous combustion but there was nothing spontaneous about it, my perpetual state morphed me into a ticking time bomb…something was bound to happen.

I decided if there’s one thing I’ll change it’s that I'll dedicate my walks to thinking. I’ll be without my phone, without calls and without podcasts. Silence. A strange, unfamiliar bliss. I turned the key to the cage of my mind and finally let my thoughts wander. 

I started to finally listen to myself more. 

One day, as I was getting ready to leave during a lovely summer day, I decided I did not want to scroll on my phone on the bus either. I dreaded it. More heat coupled with even more overstimulation. I looked at my bookshelf filled with books unread. I picked up Salutation Road by Salma Ibrahim. I placed the hardback copy in my totebag with a renewed excitement and ventured off outside. 

What a refreshing undertaking! What a relief to be able to change course and break free from a habit unserving.

(I’m skipping gleefully again).

I read the first page and I was hooked. 

It wasn’t just the plot that hooked me. It was also this exact thing - reading outside instead of scrolling outside. You see, the difference is huge - on my phone I am mindless, but reading my book I am mind-full! I am immersed, I am embraced by characters, world building, tropes, settings, new words, old words, new perspectives, old perspectives. I loved it. I was hooked on this new, more exciting path. 

Close to finishing Salutation Road, I was worried that this was just a phase. So I grabbed onto the next book on my shelf - As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh. Again, I was relieved to find solace again in books and not my phone.

My screentime went down, my cousins’ concern for me not sending them tiktok videos went up, my patience grew, my confidence too! 

My nostalgia lessened for the version of me that once read to the current version of me that now READS!

What I’m talking about might sound simple to you - reading a book. But in this day and age, reading a book is a greater accomplishment than we realise. In an economy that competes for our attention with distractions in the form of fast bites of entertainment, reading long-form becomes an outright protest; a rejection of an entrapping capitalistic lifestyle that endangers literature, and with it, literacy. 

It's an accomplishment to be able to sit down, take in word after word, page after page, of a book, to read what someone else has written. To be immersed and be educated by what another has shared. It’s a communal act - a sacrifice. A sacrifice to the endless noise of entertainment. You’re refusing to cave into instant indulgence, preferring patience over it. I am still to understand the entire glory that is reading but this much I’ve discovered in this short and intense time of returning. 

Since Salutation Road, I’ve read 7 more books and I hope this is not a phase but a lifestyle. 

Hope is not enough here, I’ll have to persist. I like this version of me, so I’ll do what I can to keep her.