I read 8 Books in a month to fix my Brainrot

Summary

The creator spent a month reading eight books to rebuild their ability to focus and enjoy slower, more absorbing activities. The experiment began after they revisited cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf’s account of struggling to stay immersed in a novel after years of screen use. Wolf recovered her concentration by slowing down and reading attentively over time.

The creator argues that the issue is not simply that phones make people “dumber.” Constant stimulation can make sustained attention—and activities that require it—feel less rewarding. Reading also sparked an unexpected interest in how stories are written, leading the creator to start a short-story-writing course.

Books Read

Most of the books were thrillers, and the creator read nearly all of them on a Kindle:

• The Only One Left — Riley Sager: A compelling mystery that kept the creator questioning the characters and their assumptions.
• Ward D — Freida McFadden: An unsettling psychological thriller with strong tension.
• The Boy — Freida McFadden: A twist-filled thriller that played with suspicion and first impressions.
• Rock, Paper, Scissors — Alice Feeney: One of the creator’s favorites for repeatedly challenging their assumptions.
• Lock All the Doors — Riley Sager: An intriguing start, though the later pacing felt slower and the plot predictable.
• The Handmaid’s Secret — Freida McFadden: Held the creator’s interest with hidden truths, though some parts felt predictable. They liked the ending.
• The Metamorphosis — Franz Kafka: A departure from thrillers, appreciated for its strange premise and unsettling, thought-provoking quality.
• Only Boring People Are Brilliant at Breakfast — Oscar Wilde: A witty collection that encouraged the creator to pause over individual observations.

Learning and Attention Takeaways

• Go beyond collecting information. Recognizing or highlighting an idea is not the same as being able to recall it, explain it, or apply it.
• Try active learning. Test yourself by retrieving information from memory, and revisit material across separate sessions instead of relying only on rereading.
• Annotate and question what you read. The creator marked up Wilde’s short book, asking why a line appealed to them, whether they agreed with it, and how it connected to their experiences.
• Treat reading as a conversation. Drawing on Virginia Woolf’s advice, the creator describes readers as collaborators who interpret, question, and connect with an author’s ideas.
• Be mindful of switching between media. Notifications and frequent shifts between books, messages, and videos can make it harder to return to a train of thought. Research on media multitasking raises concerns about distraction, but does not prove that media permanently damages attention.
• Follow curiosity rather than demanding immediate utility. One interest can naturally lead to another, making learning more enjoyable than pursuing a rigid checklist of goals.
• Allow yourself to be a beginner. Learning unfamiliar subjects involves uncertainty, mistakes, and returning to ideas until they become clearer.
• Make room to reflect. Curiosity does not mean filling every spare moment with educational content; sometimes the useful next step is to pause and think.

The creator’s suggested experiment is to choose something genuinely interesting and spend two weeks researching it beyond the surface—whether that means reading a book, exploring a topic, learning a language, or developing a skill.

Notable Names, Products, and Locations

• People mentioned: Maryanne Wolf, Richard Feynman, Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, Franz Kafka, Riley Sager, Freida McFadden, and Alice Feeney.
• Product: Kindle.
• Locations: None noted.