I need to confess something, and I need you not to judge me until the end.
Last month, I stayed up until two in the morning to finish a novel.
A Romantasy.
Monsters, a forgotten princess, a warrior who despises her, a slow burn that had me physically clutching the book.
It’s called Shield of Sparrows, and I am obsessed in a way that’s frankly unbecoming for a woman my age.
Here’s the part I actually want to talk about: it was the first fiction I’d read in years.
Not because I stopped loving books. Because somewhere along the way, my reading time got quietly replaced with screen time. The book on the nightstand lost out to the phone in my hand.
And I told myself that was fine – productive, even – because I was reading, technically. Articles. Threads. Headlines. Everyone’s opinions on everything.
But that’s not reading. That’s grazing.
Quick little hits of dopamine I’d mistaken for education – calling it productive the whole time while my actual attention got shorter, shallower, and more frantic.
Reading for pleasure – for nothing, for no takeaway, for the sheer joy of wanting to know what happens next – started to feel like something I’d grown out of. An indulgence I couldn’t justify.
And I think this is one of the quietest losses for a lot of us. Not fun in general – I have plenty of that. But this specific pleasure: being swept away by a story, with no outcome, no optimization, no point. It slipped off the list so quietly I didn’t notice until it came roaring back.
So when I fell into this ridiculous, glorious book and stayed up until 2AM like a teenager hiding a flashlight under the covers, I didn’t feel guilty. I felt like I had returned to a version of me who daydreams, allows herself to be swept away, and feels so incredibly alive. (Hello, Vivante – my word of the year!)
it turns out, is the whole thing. Not the book. The being swept away part.
The French have a word for the woman who reads novels in cafés in the middle of the afternoon with nowhere to be. They call her normal.
We’re the strange ones, treating our own pleasure like a luxury we have to earn – and handing our attention to a screen that gives us everything except the thing we actually wanted.
I can’t help but wonder: when’s the last time you were swept away by something with no point at all?
And what would it take to put the phone down and stay up too late for it?
With love,
P.S. Shield of Sparrows, Devney Perry. Do not start it on a weeknight; I’m warning you with love.
And tell me – what’s the book that you’d defend with your life? Find me on Instagram @tonyaleigh and let me know immediately. I’m building my TBR stack, and I want yours.
P.P.S. Since I started reading again, my weekly screen time has declined drastically. Highly recommend.
I give myself permission to be useless.
Not everything I do needs to have a point. Some of the best things I do are the ones that accomplish absolutely nothing.
Shield of Sparrows by Devney Perry
Romantasy wasn’t even on my radar until Shield of Sparrows found me. Once I started, I legitimately could not stop, and now I understand completely why women are obsessed with the genre.
Devney Perry writes the kind of slow burn that makes you furious and desperate at the same time. I finished this book at 2AM and immediately ordered and devoured the second book. There’s already more Romantasy in my TBR pile as I wait for the final installment of this series, which is set for release next year.
Having Fun While Achieving Your Goals [From the Archives]
This is one of my favorites from the podcast vault – because it turns out you can be ambitious and have a genuinely good time doing it.
This episode is a good reminder that the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
// TheEDIT
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