Hey Mr DJ, put a podcast on

When did I stop listening to music?

In recent months and years – probably since the pandemic, in the convenient way that every trend is somehow the result of the pandemic, even things that happened before it – I have had lots of conversations with friends about them losing the ability to read.

Each of them seems to feel a kind of deep, private shame about this situation. They feel that their struggle to pick up a book and focus on it is a personal failing rather than a simple, blameless fact; that they just don’t fancy reading right now. 

I get it, of course. Lots of these friends are writers themselves, or people more broadly connected to the media, or else they’re people who did really well at school and can’t bear the idea of no longer getting an A in English Lit. For a certain type of person (mostly a certain type of woman, let’s be real – I haven’t encountered any male friends beating themselves up over not finishing enough of the Booker shortlist), reading has been equated to goodness our whole lives.

So much so th…