This is The Guardian.

Today, how to rekindle your love of reading.

Did you used to love reading books? I did. I would read on the train, in the bath, in bed.

I was never knowingly without a book. And then I got an iPhone. And now I spend an average of four hours a day faffing about online and can only get through a novel when I'm on holiday.

And it's not just me.

I went through a moment at which I could feel my attention leaching out of my skin.

I could feel that the way I was able to engage with the text had corroded so badly over the last decade

that I decided that I would have to take sort of fairly dramatic

measures. This is Catherine Rundle. She's an award-winning children's author and an English

literature scholar at Oxford University. And even she found herself struggling to get through a book.

So she sought help. So I now have an enormous amount of tools, physical tools, to try to keep my

brain on the path which it used to find easy to walk. Meet Catherine's Brick. I have it nearby. Would you

like me to grab it for you? Okay. This is not a paid advert for the brick, which is a small plastic. It's an actual physical thing. You tap it to your phone. And when you tap it to your phone, you can block an enormous number of things on your phone. So I have blocked on my phone

everything except WhatsApp, maps, music, audiobooks, and that's it. So I cannot check my email

on my phone. It has no internet. It essentially functions like a phone from 10 years ago.

And when the brick isn't enough, she has a safe.

I also have a lockbox with a timer at the top,

where I put my phone in it so that I can't even check messages.

And then I turn off the internet in my house,

and if need be, put the router into the lockbox

so that I can just sit and read and write and think.

And the freedom that I felt that giving me very quickly was really remarkable.

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