Dear Reader,

This is my week of non-reading. I’ve been forced into literary rehab.

As someone who spends all their free time between the pages of a book, this is pure torture. The only times I haven’t read were when I was forbidden to —maybe there were exams, or maybe my mother decreed I was straining my eyes too much. Even then, there were always inventive ways around the ban: reading a Five Find-Outers mystery between my science textbooks or reading Gone with the Wind under the sheets.

But now, even I know it’s time to stop reading. I’ve returned to Mumbai to a house filled with cartons that need unpacking, a desk cluttered with unpaid invoices, and chaos in every corner. I have a week to fix it all before leaving again. The writing is on the wall: I need to stop reading—even my to-be-read list. Sonya, don’t look at Audition by Katie Kitamura, never mind that your book club is reading it. Or How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie, by your bedside after your girls recommended it as riveting. Or Fasting—no, you can’t call it “health research.” and pretend that’s not reading. Sonya, read the writing on the wall. Stop Reading.

My friends say, “You read so much!” like it’s a virtue. (The truth?........

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