Summertime, and the reading is easy. Or at least, it’s supposed to be. Holidays were made for sinking blissfully into a pile of books: for long, hot afternoons swinging in hammocks or basting on the sand, gleefully inhaling trashy beach reads or the Booker prize longlist. Finally, we have time to read, plus the urgent need to justify what is essentially two weeks of lying down by looking at least vaguely busy.
Yet, by the pool this year, I saw a striking number of people scrolling on their phones instead, some with an unopened paperback lying forlornly by the sun lounger. Not for nothing, an author friend pointed out to me recently, did Instagram Stories get its name. Reels contain just enough of a miniature plot to satisfy the human need for narrative twists, even if they are only a few seconds long, while the most successful influencers have essentially turned themselves into fictionalised characters in their own long-running minor drama. But grazing on these bite-size stories is the literary equivalent of snacking on junk: just filling enough to put you off a proper novel-length meal, but somehow never quite satisfying, and leaving the addicted reader irritably craving more.
