Book reading: Are we losing this essential skill?

“Read pages 20-30 in detail. Absorb the ideas, make notes and let’s discuss next week!” I closed the class and could see many looking concerned. “ Read? A book? Wouldn’t a YouTube video suffice? Or, better still, ask GenAI to summarise those pages?”

The students’ reactions were not just about laziness; they were a symptom of a fundamental shift in how we process the world. We have become a “summary-first” society. We want the result without the process. We want the muscle without the workout. 

When a student asks for a YouTube video instead of a chapter, they are asking to be “fed” information rather than “hunting” for it. In a video or a bulleted list, the synthesis has already been done for you by someone else—or worse, by an algorithm. You are consuming a pre-digested meal. While efficient, this bypasses the critical neural pathways that enable you to take disparate, difficult ideas and weave them into a coherent understanding of your own.

In an era of 15-second videos and AI summaries of text, the ability to sit with a single text for an hour is becoming extinct. When we read online, our brains are in “hunting” mode—looking for keywords and links. In a digital environment, your brain moves like a pinball: you read a sentence, click a hyperlink, check a notification, and skim a sidebar. This is nonlinear. Whereas “Linear thinking” is the ability to follow a single thread of thought from point A to point Z without the thread breaking. Deep reading in print or a dedicated e-reader forces the brain into “linear thinking”; by the time you reach the end of a chapter, you haven’t just absorbed information—you have constructed a logical structure in your mind

It’s not just about absorbing information; it’s about the conversation you have with the author in your head. It not only helps build mental stamina but also helps focus when there are difficult tasks at work or school that last longer than those of your peers.

Consider the concluding line of The Great Gatsby: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Try reading it yourself. Do you feel the rhythmic, exhausting struggle? The invisible force against human will? Now, ask an AI to summarise it. It gives you the “gist,” but does it give you the emotion? Skimming strips away the sophisticated vocabulary and subtle nuances that make an idea resonate.

This “shortcut” culture isn’t limited to literature. Prof. Anirudh, a music teacher, laments that his students now prefer “Shorts” to learn swaras, rather than studying them in detail to understand how they are modified and used across different compositions. In music, as in reading, the beauty and the skill lie in the transitions—the “in-between” moments that a 15-second clip simply cannot capture. By chasing the highlight reel, students miss the craft’s foundational soul.

Dr Deepthi Das, Professor and Associate Dean, School of Sciences, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), has a strong case for reading books.” Although digital devices such as tablets and mobile phones are widely used for reading, physical books remain essential. They provide a distraction-free environment, unlike screens, which often lead readers to browse or multitask. The tactile experience of holding a book further enhances comprehension and supports deeper engagement with the content 

Beyond the academic halls, this about-to-be-extinct skill is becoming a massive issue.  In a corporate world drowning in surface-level communication, the person who can actually read a twenty-page technical brief without losing focus is the person who will lead. They will see the contradictions the AI missed and the strategic nuances the skimmers overlooked.

As Dr Deepthi Das suggests, the physical book is our last fortress against the fragmented, distracted mind. By choosing the page over the screen, we aren’t just reading; we are reclaiming our ability to think for ourselves.

(The author is an academic)